fa ^oh §M&CM 







LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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Shelf ,.S~-1 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






THOUGHT SEED 



HOLY SEASONS 



REV. ROBERT S. BARRETT 

AUTHOR OF " CHARACTER BUILDING," ETC. 




NEW YORK 
THOMAS WHITTAKER 

2 and 3 Bible House 



I89O 



Copyright, 1890, 
By Thomas Whittaker 



Press of J. J. Little & Co, 
Astor Place, New York. 



DEDICATION. 



S SOMETIMES SAID OF A MAN THAT "HE IS A GENTLEMAN 
AND A SCHOLAR." IN THE FULL AND LITERAL SENSE 
OF THESE WORDS, THIS MAT BE SAID OF MY 
LOVED AND ESTEEMED FRIEND, 



gisTxtfp gittfteg 



OF KENTUCKY. 

IT MAY BE ADDED THAT HE IS A 

CHRISTIAN IN THE REAL MEANING OF THAT 

GREAT WORD; AND A CATHOLIC BISHOP, TOO, IN THE 

TRUEST AND BEST SENSE OF CATHOLIC. FOR THESE REASONS 

THIS LITTLE BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO HIM. 



alia**** 



-£3 



PREFACE. 



n^HE Christian Year, with its dear associa- 
tions, with its tremulous memories, with its 
holy days and its marvellous story, awakens in 
every heart some thoughts and hopes and resolu- 
tions. A few of my own reflections I have here 
given you. They are but "bare grain," mere seeds 
gathered after the bloom has faded. Of the flowers 
which I have woven into the Christmas evergreen 
wreath, and. the Good Friday thorn-crown, and 
among the Easter lilies, I have kept the seeds, 
and present them now to you. I pray that they 
may be suggestive of at least some part of the 
living thought and purpose of which these seeds 
are but a poor expression, and that God shall 
take this "bare grain," and give it a body, as it 
shall please Him. 



THOUGHT SEED FOR HOLY 

SEASONS. 



TTTE instinctively believe in Judgment. We 
* * have a presentiment that wrong will be 
righted, that the crooked will be made straight, 
that justice will at last prevail. We believe in a 
Day, — it may be far off, — when the unequal 
chances of men will be considered, when the prin- 
ciple of judgment will be, " To whom much is 
given shall much be required," and men shall 
receive equal praise for equal fidelity. Perhaps 
the most despised thing in all the catalogue of 
Christian men is the ignorant heathen convert, 
who, in his blind and faulty way, is groping up 
to the light ; yet at the eventide he may receive 
more — he will certainly not receive less — than 
the eloquent preacher who lays down the law for 
a multitude. It will be seen that it is as hard to 
crawl a rod through the slums of paganism, as it 
is to ride a mile on the highways of Christian 
civilization. Even among us, opportunities for 
doing good are uneven. There are rich men and 



10 Second Sunday in Advent. 

poor men, dull men and clever men, sick men and 
well men. In the noble race of doing deeds, the 
unencumbered, independent, free and strong man 
comes first to the goal, and easily too. He is 
applauded. Last to arrive is the unsuccessful 
creature who has dragged along under the chains 
of poverty or the weights of disease. But the 
sweat of a greater effort is upon him. He re- 
ceives no applause ; perhaps ridicule instead. But 
in the great cloud of witnesses is God. He sees 
the chains, the weights, the sweat, the greater 
effort, and He says, " Thou hast been faithful 
over a few things, I will make thee ruler over 
many things." 



A N English newspaper assigns its editorial 
-*--*- work to specialists. Lawyers write on law, 
soldiers on war, farmers on agriculture. One 
editor-in-chief selects these men and supervises 
their work. The paper has a great main object, 
but it gets at this object through many channels. 
It may be Conservative or Liberal, but it promul- 
gates its principles among all classes of men. 
Merchants, mechanics, lawyers, physicians, are 
sure to find something of interest written by men 
of their own professions, and in language which 



Second Sunday in Advent. 11 

they know. Thus the Bible has one great main 
object. It is " profitable for doctrine, for reproof, 
for correction, for instruction in righteousness." 
It is a book for every age and all the world. It 
has many autho7-s, but it has one Editor. He 
selects men of every character and clime, every 
degree and occupation, and they do their work 
under his unerring supervision. Thus rich and 
poor, kings and peasants, poets, philosophers and 
fishermen do hear them speak in their own tongues 
the wonderful works of God. In David's poetry, 
in St. John's narrative, in St. Paul's logic, the Holy 
Spirit permits no omission, no error. In all this 
manifold flow of thought there is a oneness of edi- 
torship which declares that all Scripture is given 
by inspiration of God. Yet a book for sages and 
babes. Our blessed Bible ! Its divine element 
grasping the wisdom of God, its human element 
dispensing it to the sons of men. An infallible 
depository of religious truth, within the reach of 
all capacities. 

"And he may read who binds the sheaf, 
Or builds the house, or digs the grave ; 
Or those wild eyes that watch the wave 
In roaring round the coral reef." 



12 Third Sunday in Advent. 



&§\xb gunbay in (fttotnf. 

A S St. John the Baptist prepared the way for 
-*--*- the Christ, so God's minister prepares our 
way for death and judgment. This prophet of 
Jordan may be rough or sombre, this voice in the 
wilderness may seem a solemn sound. Its soul- 
searching directness may irritate, may anger us. 
But we had better heed. Men almost instinctively 
resent reproof ; they do not like plain truths about 
themselves. Light hurts weak eyes ; honey burns 
sore throats. Lais, the Corinthian beauty, broke 
her mirror because it showed her wrinkles. This 
is foolish. I ought to be grateful to any who help 
me to know myself. When I remember how I 
shrink from reproving another, I ought to feel 
deeply indebted to the man who has brought him- 
self to the point of reproving me. Some one has 
said that no man can be perfect without either a 
watchful enemy or a faithful friend. Let us value 
the faithful friend. He may not tickle our van- 
ity, as does the honey-tongued flatterer, who, like 
Vitellius, worshipped Jehovah at Jerusalem and 
Caligula at Rome, but he will make us stronger 
and purer. The faithful friend may not be wise, or 
even delicate, in his methods, but let us appreciate 
his spirit. We, not he, will lose most if we drive 
him from us. If fallen under a burden, would you 
resent the service of him who came to lift it ? If 



Fourth Sunday in Advent. 13 

wounded, would you repel the hand outstretched 
to set the broken bone ? If benighted in the wil- 
derness, would you take ill the proffers of a guide ? 
Welcome, then, the true minister of God, who 
comes to lift the burden of sin, to heal the wounded 
heart, and guide your wandering feet back to the 
Father's house. 



5out^ ^unba^ in (ftb&atf. 

/CONSCIENCE is a fact. You may disregard 
^-^ it, but you cannot deny its existence. You 
may disobey it, but you must listen to it. Con- 
science is not at our disposal. Its message is 
simple, but urgent. It says, " Do right, do right," 
— only this. It does not decide what is right. 
We must decide that for ourselves. We are re- 
sponsible for our decision. Conscience is no casu- 
ist. It simply says, " Do right, do right. 1 ' It is a 
voice within us, but it comes from without us. If 
we disobey, conscience whips us, and we must sub- 
mit. The voice may be hushed for a time, but 
only for a time. Conscience may be smothered by 
passion. It may be trampled under foot by selfish- 
ness. Pride may take away its sceptre, pleasure 
may seize its crown, wilful sin may usurp its throne. 
But its voice will whisper, " Do right, do right." 
And by and by its revenge will come. Then it 



14 Christmas Day. 

will no longer whisper. Passion loses its grip, 
selfishness, sin, and pride become impotent. Con- 
science arises in its wrath, seizes again its throne 
and crown, waves its sceptre over wreck and ruin, 
and cries aloud, with the voice of a victor, "Do 
right ! " 



TDAGANISM is misplaced incarnation. Some of 
-*- these fancied incarnations are very revolting, 
and some of them are really sublime. The Egyp- 
tian's cat and crocodile are gross forms for God to 
take. The horrid fetiches of the Dark Continent 
are even worse. The Greek mythologies are classic 
and beautiful. There is something imposing in the 
fire-worship of the Parsees, and the Indian's river- 
god moving in majesty. But when God did really 
come to dwell among us, He came as a human child, 
an infant in its mother's arms. This is at once the 
most mysterious, the most beautiful, and the most 
universal form God could take, as far as we can 
think. The most mysterious, because Darwin and 
Huxley acknowledge no more baffling mystery 
than that of mother and child. The most beauti- 
ful, because Raphael and Murillo attempted to 
paint nothing more beautiful than a child in its 
mother's arms. The most universal, because the 



Holy Innocents' Day. 15 

traveller who encircles the earth hears no voice 
which declares the brotherhood of man like the 
voice of an infant. It is a universal language, 
always the same, whether the plaintive cry come 
from the Indian pappoose hanging from the bend- 
ing bow, or from the Italian bambino among the 
sunny hills of Tuscany. The same one touch of 
nature, whether coming from Laplander's furs, or 
Hottentot's booth, or Hindoo's bungalow, or Turk's 
kiosk, or Arab's tent, or the silken curtains of a 
palace, or the squalid poverty of a garret. Mys- 
terious ! beautiful ! universal ! 



"^TESTLE close to the warm heart of Jesus, thou 
-^ little one ; for there alone among all the re- 
ligions of the earth is a place for thee ! Christ's 
religion respects children. It considers nothing 
else in all this world more worthy of respect and 
love. Childhood is sanctified by the God-Child. 
Our blessed religion looks upon children as im- 
mortal creatures, full of beauty. They are the 
inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. We are so 
accustomed to see children treated as if they were 
really people, that we do not appreciate the bless- 
ing of it. It is by no means a matter of course 



16 The Sunday after Christmas. 

that children are respected. Look at the social 
contempt in which Mahometan children are held. 
Look at the random influence of the infidel's child. 
The atheist may indeed treat his child after the 
Christian custom of the land he lives in; but at 
the bottom of his creed the child is a mere perish- 
ing brute. Listen to the shrill shriek that comes 
from the fiery altar of Moloch, and the splash on 
the banks of the Ganges. Look at China's infant- 
icide, and the blotfd on the Juggernaut's wheel. 

Then look at Christendom's child enthroned, 

enthroned in the church, in the home, in the 
school, in Christian art, and in the Christmas fes- 
tival. Blessed be the Bethlehem manger, that 
makes holy the estate of childhood. And God 
bless every child and every childlike heart this 
blessed day. 



t$t gunbty tftet tfyxwtmcx*. 



o 



NE very good thing about adversity is that it 
makes us sympathetic. We feel with the af- 
flicted as well as for them. And the afflicted real- 
ize this, and that is the best part of it. If I am in 
trouble there comes to me a friend who has never 
known sorrow. I thank him for his well-meaning 
words, but they do not get near my heart. Then 
comes a woman in deep black ; no words come 



End of the Year. 17 

from the crape veil, but a soft hand is laid upon 
mine in silence, and the magnetic touch of sympa- 
thy conveys comfoit from her life to mine. Thus 
God entered into all the conditions of human grief 
and weakness, not that He might feel for us, but 
that He might feel with us, that He might be 
touched with a feeling of our infirmities, and that 
we might realize this. He became all things to 
all men, to teach all men that sin was the only 
condition which his sj^mpathy cannot touch. To 
the suffering, He is the Man of Sorrows ; to the iso- 
lated, He is treading the wine-press alone ; to the 
joyous, He is the guest at the feast; to the poor, 
He hath not where to lay his head ; to the laborer, 
He is the carpenter of Nazareth ; to the aged, He 
is descending into the valley of the shadow of 
death ; to the boy, He is a boy ; to children, and 
to all of us who have need to cherish children, He 
is the helpless babe nourished at a woman's breast. 



&nb of t$t ytoct. 



A LADY once dreamed that she was sailing in 
~^-*- a boat, and that her necklace having broken 
loose, the pearls were dropping one by one into the 
sea, yet she could not prevent it. It is no dream, 
but a reality, that we have the bitter pang of seeing 
our precious years slipping from us forever, one by 
one. Oh, subtle, insatiable Time, what hast thou 



18 Circumcision — New Year's Day. 

not devoured ! The devourer leaves but little in- 
deed, to him whose treasures are laid up on earth. 
At the year's end they have a handful of dust 
— memories, regrets, and worse. What a time 
this is to weigh the dust of the dead past ! A 
poor creature in despair was heard to make the 
crazed cry, " If thou canst call back Time again, 
then there is hope for me ! " It cannot be done. 
It is gone ! We shall never see it again till the 
judgment. There is no use to follow along behind 
Time, with hot tears and vain regrets and moral 
sentiments. The proverb says, " Wisdom walks 
before Time, and Opportunity beside it."' Turn 
your sentiments and tears into resolution, faith, 
and prayer. Make Time give instead of take. It 
will give you a sweet conscience and a happy hope. 
It will give you soul treasures which it cannot 
take away again. Time will be the vestibule of 
Eternity. The passing years, one by one, will be 
the successive upward steps to God. 



Circumct0ion — (TUto Vtax f B ©a^. 

SOMETIMES we stand by the open grave. The 
well-known form swings down in silence to its 
narrow bed. " Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, 
dust to dust." The men cast down the sod; the 
sexton smooths off the mound ; the priest steps 



Epiphany. 19 

back ; the spades and the ropes are laid aside ; then 
comes one silently and puts down a wreath of 
roses, and another with trembling hand lays down 
a cross of chrysanthemums, and another with 
moist eyes comes with an anchor of evergreen, 
and the cold grave is covered with flowers. Ah 
me ! It's a pity that all the flowers were kept till 
the friend was dead. Perhaps a single bud in the 
sick-room would have made one day less tedious. 
Perhaps a single mark of consideration would have 
lifted the burden and inspired hope. Who can 
tell ? On this glad, this sad new year, let us re- 
member that we have living friends and children 
and God's own poor. It will do them, at least, 
more good, if now, and not hereafter, we weave 
the wreath of roses for the pathway, or a chaplet 
of encouragement, or a cross of faith, or an an- 
chor of hope. 



n~^HE spirit of Christianity is getting away from 
-*- self. The farther the better. The farther 
from self, the nearer the spirit of Christ, who came 
so far to die. There is much self in our kind 
deeds. In our Christmas gifts to friends there is 
much self-gratification; less in the gift to the 
parish; less still in the contributions to the dio- 



20 Epiphany. 

cese ; less still in those sent to domestic missions ; 
and least selfishness of all, and therefore more re- 
ligion, in money sent to foreign missions. Jesus 
was the greatest foreign missionary. St. Paul was 
a true foreign missionary. There were plenty of 
sinners in Asia, but the command said, " Go into 
all the world." The foreign field was Europe. 
Think of that ! Europe ! And yet some ques- 
tion the success of foreign missions. Then, cen- 
turies later, America called for help. No doubt 
some said, " We have too many practical heathens 
at home." But others sent help to America. 
Now some here begrudge the pittance which goes 
to do for others what was done for us. They say, 
" Look at the poor and ignorant at home." Well, 
look at them by all means, and help them too. 
But do not take the little ewe lamb from the poor 
man's bosom to feed thy guest ; take it from thy 
abundant flocks. Do not take the sparse trifle 
from the mission fund to teach the heathen at thy 
door. Take it from the abundance of fashion, 
from the millions devoted to luxury, from the for- 
tunes lavished upon dissipation and vanity. Do 
God's command, and save thy soul. He says, 
Spread the gospel abroad. It will succeed ; never 
fear. Of course much foundation work, costly 
masonry, must disappear before the superstructure 
gladdens the eye. But all true work is God's, and 
in his time the work will rise to sight, a splendid 
fabric, like Europe and America. 



First Sunday after Epiphany. 21 



T TOPE is man's inspiration. Hope's yoke is 
-* — ■- easy, and her burden is light, and her toil is 
sweet ; for with magic wand she inspires man with 
her pictures of the future. When the weary stu- 
dent burns the midnight, oil, she keeps her vigil 
too, and paints the honors of commencement day. 
When she would wipe the sweat from the laborer's 
brow, she summons up the cheerful glow and 
domestic joy of a future hearthstone that shall be 
his. When she would cheer the fainting farmer's 
heart who sows his seed upon the upturned sod, 
she unfolds the fields of waving golden grain. 
When she would speed the caravan across the arid 
sands of the desert, she pictures the gurgling foun- 
tains of the oasis and the waving palms. When 
she would nerve the sailor's heart to climb the 
swaying mast, she portrays the prospect of the 
green hills and white cottages which encircle 
the placid harbor far away. When she would fire 
the soldier's blood amid scenes of carnage and 
death, she holds before his eyes the spoils and 
crowns of victory. Yes, hope is man's inspira- 
tion, his solace in trouble, his guide in perplexity, 
his strength in weakness ; the poor man's wealth, 
the sick man's medicine, the belated traveller's 
lamp, the prisoner's window, the Christian's very 
life. 



22 Second Sunday after Epiphany, 



^ttonb ^unb<xy after &p$atiy. 

r | ^HERE are men whose religion is like a stringed 
-*- instrument, that must be tuned before it will 
perform. Another's religion is like the human 
voice, always ready. There are men who pray 
without ceasing; that is, they keep in the pres- 
ence of God, so that they can speak with Him at 
any moment. To such a man, prayer is the almost 
unconscious breathing of the soul. As the miser 
holds spiritual communion with his gold wherever 
he may be, as the ambitious man plots in silent 
thought, as the glutton craves his meat and drink, 
thus the prayerful man, whether he works or plays 
or travels, will feel beside him the solemn and 
sweet presence of God. This very sense of God's 
presence is prayer. Prayer is not something put 
on, something foreign to us. It is part of us. It 
is like a golden thread woven into a beautiful 
texture. It frequently disappears and reappears ; 
yet it runs all through, beautifying and strength- 
ening all. Let the golden thread of prayer be 
woven in among the many varied threads of our 
life, touching all, strengthening all, beautifying all. 



Third Sunday after Epiphany. 23 



" /'""l OD is too good to damn anybody." So we 
^-^ hear some say nowadays. They are quite 
right. God does not damn anybody ; but many 
damn themselves. Damnation is sin and suffering 
producing and perpetuating each other. We see 
suffering producing sin in this world, and sin pro- 
ducing suffering. Look at the low dens, with 
their diseased, poisoned, putrescent inmates, their 
depravity, their profligacy, their brutality, their 
bodily torture, their mental anguish. Is not that 
damnation ? — sin and suffering acting and react- 
ing. Hell is that same thing projected into the 
soul's future. God does not damn men. He tries 
to prevent it. He moves heaven and earth to 
prevent it. Was not the crucifixion moving 
heaven and earth? The crucifixion was God's 
supreme effort to keep men from hell. How un- 
reasonable to charge God with your death ! Sup- 
pose I went, sick and suffering, through the stormy 
night to hold a light for you at some dizzy chasm ; 
suppose you struck down the light which I had 
brought with so much pains ; suppose you lost 
your foothold and fell into the abyss below, could 
I be charged with your death? Well, then, did 
not God bring you light ? Did He not with scarred 
hand hold that light over your pathway ? If you 



24 



Fourth Sunday after Epiphany. 



reject it and fall, can you charge Him with your 
death? No; oh, no! - This is the condemna- 
tion, that light came into the world, and men loved 
darkness rather than light." 



TTTE pursue different roads, but the same object, 
happiness! Kings sit upon their thrones, 
diplomates mature their schemes, orators make their 
speeches, poets sing their verses, merchants trade, 
architects build and mechanics toil, but the ultimate 
end of all is happiness. And yet happiness is 
hard to reach. It is like standing upon some hill, 
and looking at the mellow summer sunshine that 
tints a distant hill; we go in search of it, but when 
we reach that hill we find it gray and cold, and we 
look back and see the soft light shining on the 
spot from whence we came. One says, " Pleasure 
is what I want," so he laughs, and then says, 
" Heigh-ho ! " That sigh is the dregs in the cup. 
Another says, -Love will make me happy." 
Novels, as soon as they get their heroes together, 
write " Finis," and close the book. The rim of the 
cup is sAveet; they do not let us see the bottom. 
Another says, "Wealth will make me happy." 
They used to tell me that if I got to the foot of a 



Fifth Sunday after Epiphany. 25 

rainbow, I would find a bag of gold ; well, many a 
man has found the bag of gold, but the rainbow 
of promise has vanished. Some think there is hap- 
piness in fame. Not necessarily. Like cracked 
bells in high towers, some lives in great elevation 
give out no melody or sweetness. I will tell you 
how to be happy : trust God ! The wise man said 
that, after having drained every cup. After pleas- 
ures the most extravagant, and luxury unequalled, 
and wealth unlimited, and fame the most illus- 
trious, he said : " Whoso trusteth in the Lord, 
happy is he." 



$tfl§ ^unba^ after <£pip$an^ 

" T SAY that is a bad report, my boy. Some did 
-*- worse, it is true, but some did better. The 
reason why I say your report is bad is because it 
is below the general average, and therefore you 
helped to loiver and not raise the general average." 
All of this I said to a boy who showed me his 
report. Then I went off into this line of thought : 
We ought not to defer our actions to public opin- 
ion, to conventionality, because the world's opinion 
is lower than our standard of right ought to be. 
Public opinion is average opinion. It is not the 
lowest ; not the highest. It is mediocrity in 
morals and religion. No doubt the level of public 



26 Sixth Sunday after Epiphany. 

opinion is getting higher; but it is never raised 
by those who follow public opinion. It is raised 
by the increasing number of those who live above 
public opinion, and who thereby raise the average. 
If we would better the world, we will do it, not 
by conforming to the average, but by living above 
the average, and thereby raising the average. This, 
it seems to me, is the very least that is to be 
expected of every Christian. 



~| TOPE may be a flatterer; it may be a true 
-1—1- friend. It may be a light unto my path, or it 
may be an ignis-fatuus to lure my feet to death. 
Many have been saved by hope, many have been 
lost by hope. When an Ohio-river steamboat was 
burned, a passenger was drowned b}' a defect in his 
life-preserver. The first thing I do on entering 
the stateroom of a steamer or ship, is to examine 
my life-preserver. I once found one with the 
strings so insecure that if I had trusted to it, it 
would have betrayed me. How dreadful to trust 
hope, to follow hope, to be lost by hope ! It is not 
apt to be so with that hope which comes of trial, 
v, Inch grows out of discipline, which has its door 
in the " valley of Achor." 



Septnagesima. 27 

The trouble with joy-born hope, nurtured in 
sunshine and luxury and ease, — the trouble with 
such hope is that it is conceited. It looks to self 
and not to God. It is based upon a continuance 
of prosperity. These cannot always continue. 
All of its joy has come from the quiet and com- 
fort of its own narrow life. Such hope is doomed 
to sure disaster. It is like the spider spinning his 
silken web out of his own bowels, and laying his 
beautiful geometrical plans, when one sudden 
sweep from a counter plan brushes the graceful 
spinner and his work into one black ball of dirt, 
in which we find his hopes have become his wind- 
ing sheet. 



£t\>tmc$i8%\na. 



"A /TILTON'S Paradise Lost, Dante's Inferno, 
JJVJL D or ^' s cartoons, the weird word-painting of 
the pulpit, dreadful fancy pictures of hell, — all of 
this cannot make us understand what it is to be 
lost. It was not to purgatory or hell that Christ 
went, but it was into this world of ours that he 
came to seek and to save the lost. They were 
here. To be lost is to get away from where we 
belong. The lost sheep, the lost prodigal, were 
wanderers. They were not dead, they were not in 
hell; but they were lost. The soul does not 



28 Sexagesima. 

belong to sin and the devil ; it belongs to God. 
And if you want to know how lost the soul is, 
then learn how far it has gotten away from God. 
That is the thing to know. Heaven and hell are 
incidentals. If you take care to be saved from 
youY sins, to be brought back to the image of God 
from which you have wandered, heaven and hell 
will take care of themselves. Now, if you would 
know how lost you are, put your life, with all its 
selfishness and littleness, beside the life of Jesus ; 
your motives by his, your thoughts by his, your 
heart by his. Try and see how far you have gotten 
away from the perfect image of the God-Man. He 
is the perfect specimen of man, of which the rest 
of us are ruins, it matters not how magnificent 
these ruins may be. He shows us a specimen of 
man who is not lost. The image of Christ will 
teach us more about the lost than Dora's cartoons 
could ever do. 



f I ^HE devil, by some surprising ingenuity, has 
-*- contrived to create the impression that reli- 
gion is unmanly. Most men desire to be manly, 
and most profess to be. What is manliness? 
Some very young persons have imagined that it is 
manly to smoke cigars or swear. Others think 



Sexagesima. 29 

manliness is physical perfection, — strength, agil- 
ity, skill, endurance. Of course, it is a Christian 
duty to develop the body. Other things rule by 
strength, but the body rules by weakness. If we 
would govern our bodies, they must be strong and 
well. A sick, weakly body will surely rule us as 
a tyrant. But manliness is in the soul. Indeed, 
no quality can be called essentially manly in which 
the brute may excel the man. Feats of endurance, 
strength, and skill have been applauded as manly; 
but no man can lift as much as an ass, or swim as 
far as a goose. Quick resentment and stubborn 
conflict have been thought manly, but this would 
make the bull-dog manly. Manliness consists of 
four things, — unselfishness, truth, moral courage, 
and earnestness. The selfish man is not manly, 
though he be as strong as Atlas. The liar is not 
manly, though he be the laureate pugilist of the 
land. The moral coward is not manly, whatever 
may be his physical hardihood. The frivolous man 
cannot be manly, for his life lacks purpose and 
positive power. Now, all of these manly qualities 
find their highest development in the true Chris- 
tian. 



30 Qninquagesima. 



Quinqua^sima. 



M 1 



"EN in these times seem unwilling to hear of 
- future punishment. Hell is no longer a 
word for ears polite. They talk as if " a certain 
class of preachers " invented hell and kept it burn- 
ing to enforce their precepts. I was in Xaples in 
1884, the year that cholera was epidemic. The 
Xeapolitans accused the physicians of bringing the 
cholera. The physicians predicted it; they told 
the people that unless they cleaned up their city 
the scourge would come. They laid down rules 
and gave warning. So when the cholera came, the 
people thought the physicians brought it to intimi- 
date them into washing themselves and keeping 
their back yards clean, so they threw stones at the 
physicians and drove them out of the city. These 
physicians had come to risk their lives for the un- 
grateful people who rejected them. Thus when 
preachers begin to talk of the scourge which will 

follow sin, the people — that is, some of them 

begin to think the preachers are in some way re- 
sponsible for this scourge. The preachers are as- 
sailed as cruel, fanatical, behind the times, and all 
that. Our Lord is a physician. He came and 
found the disease of sin and its fatal consequences 
here already. He did not bring them. He left 
his home to improve the sanitary condition of this 



Ash Wednesday. 31 

world, to cleanse its filth. And in order to induce 
men to submit to his treatment, He warns them to 
flee from the wrath to come. 



"TTTHEREIN lies the reasonableness of fasting? 
' » It is bringing the body into subjection ; it 
is a recognition that the body is a machine. The 
body is an important machine, God given. It 
is a dangerous machine, capable of destroying 
its owner. A good servant, a bad master. It is 
to keep the soul's mastership that we fast. The 
best fasting will have this distinct object in view. 
It will be done with intelligence and system. There 
is a vast deal of random, aimless fasting, well meant, 
but blind. Could we not have a text-book on fast- 
ing, — a book of tactics to increase our efficiency 
in fighting the flesh ? For want of something else, 
suppose we use some book on hygiene. How would 
Dio Lewis on " Our Digestion " do for a guide to 
fasting? Why not have a competent teacher to 
tell us what to eat, how to eat, how much to eat ; 
to tell us what food and drink conduce to animal 
development, what manner of living helps to bring 
the body into subjection, and make it a useful ser- 
vant instead of a cruel master ? If we have intel- 



32 Second Day of Lent. 

ligence and system about this important business 
of fasting, it will be much more interesting, reason- 
able, and helpful to us. It will surely not be less 
Christian or acceptable to God because it is done 
with system, not less devotional, not less compati- 
ble with prayer. And these hygienic rules of life 
will furnish ninety-nine out of every hundred per- 
sons all the scope for abstinence from food which 
they could desire, or which a season of humiliation 
could demand. Of course propriety will suggest 
abstinence in other directions, — abstinence from 
gayety and festivity while we are commemorating 
the sufferings of our Saviour. 



^tconb ©a^ of Btnt 

TT^ORBIDDEX fruit is sweet. It is sweetened 
-*- by the devil. One forbidden tree in Eden 
seemed better than a thousand trees allowed. That 
terrible magician has power to concentrate our gaze 
upon one object — power to withdraw our eyes from 
the pure and wholesome fruits of many trees, and 
rivet them upon that one forbidden thing. He so 
intensifies our thought upon that one desire that it 
outgrows all desires, and perhaps life itself for the 
time seems stale and fiat unless that one desire be 
gratified. That is one of the supernatural powers 



Third Day of Lent. 33 

of the serpent to charm his victims. This dreadful 
delusion, this deadly fascination, fills common ob- 
jects with dazzling beauty. The colored lights of 
hell are reflected upon earthly things, and make 
them appear heavenly. Thus the gaming table is 
made to assume attractions which make money and 
land and houses insignificant trifles in comparison. 
Thus a glass of liquor grows in beauty and power 
that will out-dazzle the love of family, or the joys 
of home, or even the hopes of heaven. 



tfyixb ®cy of &<wL 

TTTHEN the pot of passion boils over, then 
* » human law takes cognizance, not before. 
In this it differs from the law of Christ, which sees 
the ingredients in the caldron seething, bubbling, 
prevented only by fear from boiling over often. 
Thus with murder, — the law sees it only in the 
crimson blood and the ghastly corpse ; Christ sees 
boiling in the heart, the pot of death, the poisonous 
ingredients of hate and greed. " Whosoever hateth 
his brother is a murderer." So with adultery. 
Society takes cognizance of the sickening scandal ; 
but Christ sees the poison in the heart, sees the 
fire burn, and the caldron boil, and the poison 
seethe, and exultant demons, witch-like, join hands 



34 Fourth Day of Lent. 

around the charmed pot, and add their odious por- 
tions. Ah, human heart ! wilt thou thus lie still 
and let devils brew within thee the hell-broth of in- 
famy and death ? Do you think, because no human 
eyes see this, that it is innocent or safe ? 

" Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see 
God." Aye, and woe to the foul in heart, for God 
shall see them. 



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TTTHEN David proposed to build a house to 
* * God, his pious wish was appreciated, but 
God told him, through honest old Nathan, that he 
could not build the Lord's house. David's hands 
were bloody. God is in no hurry. He desired the 
temple to be built. He wanted it, but it had better 
never be built than to be built by wrong methods 
or wrong precedents, or by the wrong man. He 
told David that He had already been represented 
on earth by a tabernacle for centuries, and that He 
could wait. A transient resident of a miner's camp 
can live in a tent, but when a man is going to spend 
his life in a town he builds upon the best founda- 
tions, and adorns his home with the slow-growing 
and sturdy oak. Corporations build stronger, and 
governments stronger still. Historic churches are 
willing to devote centuries to the slow growth of 



First Sunday in Lent. 35 

massive minsters. So the eternal God would rathei 
have his work done properly than quickly. He 
would rather have his^work true and silent, than 
noisy and false. He would rather have it solid 
than showy ; unseen and eternal rather than seen 
and temporal. He would rather have one Bible 
given away by a clean hand than ten distributed 
by a foul one. He would rather have five Chris- 
tians who are Christians across counters, and over 
dinner-tables, and behind neighbors' backs, than a 
thousand who are Christians only in church on 
Sunday morning. He would rather have the Church 
grow with an increase of ten sincere conversions, 
than have it flooded with a hundred shallow pro- 
fessions, with its certain ebb-tide of ninety back- 
sliders. 



$\wt $unb<xy in £to\t 

" T3 EPENT ! " This word reverberated through 
J-V the wilderness waste of Judea. " Repent ! " 
This was the keynote of the Baptist's preaching. 
" Repent ! " This caught the haughty Pharisee's 
ear, and startled the mailed Roman. " What shall 
we do ? " — " Do ? " — " Yes, what ? " — " Do good." 
— " Is that repentance ? " — " Yes." — Repentance 
is positive, tangible. It is not sentiment, it is not 
pretty words, it is not a spasm ; it is plain duty, it 



36 Fifth Day of Lent. 

is downright determination to do right, so help me 
God. This John preached, this Jesus taught. Re- 
pentance is not crying, " Lord, Lord ! " but doing 
the will of my Father which is in heaven. Mercy, 
justice, humility, purity, truth, — doing these things, 
and the undoing of their opposites, that is repent- 
ance. To the slave of flesh, repentance means con- 
trol ; to the libertine it means chastity ; to the 
stingy it means liberality ; to the slanderer it means 
charity ; to the harsh it means gentleness ; to the 
impatient it means long-suffering ; to the discon- 
tented it means gratitude ; to the sinner it means 
that which he is not and ought to be. Of the in- 
cidentals to repentance — sorrow, tears, emotion — - 
the Bible takes little account, because it would not 
divert our attention from the main thing, which is 
to hate sin and forsake it. 



5tf¥§ ©ay of &tnt. 

T AST summer the good ship Wi eland brought 
■*—* over a large number of caged birds. When 
we were about mid-ocean one restless bird escaped 
from his cage. In ecstasy he swept through the 
air, away and away from his prison. How he 
bounded with outspread wings ! Freedom ! How 
sweet he thought it ! Across the pathless waste he 



Sixth Day of Lent. 37 

entirely disappeared. But after hours had passed, 
to our amazement, he appeared again, struggling 
towards the ship with heavy wing. Panting and 
breathless, he settled upon the deck. Far, far over 
the boundless deep, how eagerly, how painfully had 
he sought the ship again, now no longer a prison, 
but his dear home. As I watched him nestle down 
on the deck, I thought of the restless human heart 
that breaks away from the restraints of religion. 
With buoyant wing he bounds away from Church 
the prison, and God the prison. But if he is not 
lost on the remorseless deep, he comes back again 
with panting, eager heart, to Church the home, and 
God the home. The Church is not a prison to any 
man. It gives the most perfect freedom in all that 
is good and all that is safe. It gives him liberty to 
do what is right, and to do what is wrong there is 
no rightful place to any man in all the boundless 
universe. 



^W§ ©a^ of SMlt 

T OVE ! St. Paul eulogized it in his Corinthian 
-*— * Epistle. Love is the Christian's life, his rule, 
his motive power, his incentive, his destination, his 
reward, his God. Orators' eloquence, singers' mel- 
ody, angels' songs, without love, are hollow, heart- 
less sound. Theological knowledge without love 



38 Sixth Day of Lent. 

is dry lumber in a garret. Leo X. and Henry VIII. 
were theologians. A man may have dogged faith 
in a cause that will energize his will to move 
mountains of difficulty, like Richelieu, yet without 
love he is nothing. He may play the card of alms- 
giving, and be defiant to the martyr's stake ; with- 
out love it profiteth nothing. Long-suffering and 
kindness are its general characteristics. " Envieth 
not " — let others be happy. " Vaunteth not itself " 

— does not swagger and talk big. " Does not be- 
have unseemly" — hate, not love, makes men do 
ugly. A healthy parasite of hate growing at a 
man's heart eats up all its sweetness. Love "seek- 
eth not her own " — she is not forward ; she is no 
loud creature made up of paint and noise, but a 
coy maiden, calm as the blue sky, modest as the 
wee daisy, pure as the mountain rill, Charity ! " Is 
not provoked" — loseth not her temper. Con- 
trolled temper is a splendid energy. Lose your 
temper, and it will find you. " Thinketh no evil " 

— instead of putting two and two together and 
making four, it takes two from two, making nothing. 
" Rejoiceth not in iniquity " — there are those who 
rejoice in an enemy's disgrace, though hell triumph 
by it. " Rejoiceth in the truth " — charity never 
minimizes the truth. Love never says, "Oh, well, 
it don't make any difference what you believe." 
" Beareth all things " — like the broad sea, quench- 
ing every spark of spite. " Believeth all things " 

— believes in brother man with all his faults. 



Seventh Day cf Lent. 39 

" Hopeth all things" — man will yet come to 
the goal with palms of victory. " Endureth all 
things " — love makes watching and waiting and 
toil sweet. 



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T N Mammoth Cave the old negro guide told us 
-"- how people had been lost there from time to 
time. When found, they overwhelmed him with 
embraces and other demonstrations of gratitude. 
Some became insane through fright ; some fled in 
terror from the guides. Once a woman was lost 
for about twenty-four hours. In that terrible dark- 
ness, in the silence in which hearts beat loud, she 
had waited in dreadful suspense. Superstitious 
dread filled her crazed heart. At last the guide 
came, his footfalls echoing like whispers and 
groans, his lantern casting ghostly shadows upon 
the walls. The poor terrified creature arose, and 
fled away into the darkness. The guide pursued 
— a veritable black devil he seemed ! At last he 
overtook her, — unconscious, prostrate, ashy white. 
In his strong arms he raised her from the ground, 
and carried her out to safety and light and home ! 
How often is it so ! When the Saviour comes, 
we flee from him. Misconceptions of Him, distor- 
tions of Him, shadows of Him in this dark world, 
fancies of Him in our sinful hearts, make Him 



40 Eighth Day of Lent. 

seem other than He is. And we flee from our 
Saviour and our Guide — flee away into the dark- 
ness. And yet He came to find us, to save us, to 
bear us to the light. He came to his own, and 
his own received him not. 



6t<#$ ©ay of &tnl 

TT is said that man is a religious animal. He 
must have some religion. To any Christian it 
must be the religion of Christ ; that or none. We 
cannot go back to paganism. We cannot return to 
Judaism. Judaism is nothing but a promissory 
note. If Christ is not the Messiah, that note is 
two thousand years past due, and daily becoming 
more worthless and more hopeless. We cannot go 
to Mahomet, riding armor-clad and blood-stained, 
leading us to a life of revenge and a heaven of sen- 
suality. We cannot accept Brahmanism, with its 
vedas and its Hindoo gods, with its metaphysical 
quibbles and its social tyrannies. Every woman, 
and every man with wife and sister and daughter, 
says, Ave will have no Brahmanism. We cannot 
be atheists, and say "There is no God!" for then 
would Nature's heart cease to beat, and we could 
only stand orphaned by its mighty corpse, and wait 
without hope till we are buried at last in the same 
eternal grave of rayless night. 



Tenth Day of Lent. 41 



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r | ^HERE is no contrast so fearful as the contrast 
-"- between the illusions of temptation before the 
sin is committed, and its reality afterwards ; be- 
tween the appearance of the forbidden fruit as it 
hangs upon the tree, and the taste it leaves in the 
mouth. How cruel the tempter's irony when lie 
said, " Your eyes shall be opened " ! No sooner 
had the hell-kindled desire been indulged, than 
their souls were smitten with a cold and shivering 
disgust. The fruit turned to ashes in their mouth. 
The tree so beautified by colored lights of hell 
dwindles to a thorn-tree, scattering seed to curse 
the soil and tear the children's feet. The angelic 
radiance of the tempter falls off, and betrays the 
cold coils of the loathsome serpent. The flowers 
of Eden wither as soon as plucked, and the garden 
itself is blasted and blackened by the fires of an 
outraged conscience. 



&tnt§ ©ay of Jknt 

TTOW defective, how false, is the world's judg- 
' * ment! If the Pharisee labors and prays to 
be seen of men, verily he shall have his reward. 
He shall be seen of men, and praised of them, too, 
no doubt. But what is it all worth? Praise is 



42 Second Sunday in Lent. 

the most hollow, the most uncertain thing. The 
enhancement of worldly circumstance makes men 
appear better than they are. What a veil will 
wealth throw over a rich man's vices ! What at- 
traction will beauty give even to the ignorance and 
folly of a woman! What undeserved applause 
merely accidental success will win ! Wealth, 
beauty, genius, success, are pedestals upon which a 
moral dwarf may stand, and look taller than the 
moral giant who stands upon the plain earth of 
homeliness or poverty. But it will not always be 
so. " We brought nothing into this world, and it 
is certain we can carry nothing out." We will 
carry no pedestals out. When we stand before 
the judgment-seat of Christ, we will stand upon 
our own feet and be judged as we are. Then will 
follow the great reversal of human judgments. 
" Many that are first shall be last, and the last 
shall be first" 



^econb ^unba^ in &tnt 



i 



REMEMBER with distinct vividness the 
most relished food I ever ate. It was a hard 
crust, by a mountain rill. The sauce was hun- 
ger. Again, a sense of duty has often made me 
go almost with loathing to a sumptuous feast. In 
one case each dry crumb turned to blood and 



Second Sunday in Lent. 43 

strength. In the other case each rich morsel 
turned to lead and stupor. Let teachers of chil- 
dren consider this. Well-meaning mothers or cur- 
riculums may stuff without nourishing. Thus 
some as full as a bookshelf are no wiser. God 
feeds through the appetite. " He hath filled the 
hungry with good things, and the rich hath He 
sent empty away." Thus the pale, crammed grad- 
uate, rich in self-esteem, sheepskins, and mother's 
kisses, may go empty away, — empty of mental 
vigor and clear vision. There are men full of 
moral platitudes, and empty of moral principle ; 
full of maxims, good forms, and Pharisees' formu- 
las, but empty of real love for truth and light. 
In religion especially thousands are starving, not 
for want of food, but for want of appetite. What 
has clogged your soul's appetite ? Perhaps it 
needs fresh air. Then force your soul out of the 
narrow walls of self. Perhaps it needs exercise. 
Then grapple with some good and earnest Chris- 
tian work. Perhaps it has been surfeiting on 
sweetmeats. Then discard forever religious sen- 
timentality — a religion of trash — newspaper, yel- 
low-back-novel religion. Come hungry, and God 
will feed you. " Blessed are they which do hun- 
ger and thirst after righteousness ; for they shall 
be filled." 



44 Eleventh Day of Lent. 



etVDtnty ©a^ of Bent 

/^VUR Lord knows what is in man. The su- 
^-^ perficial, upper soil does not deceive Him. 
Under the covering of good clothes he sees the 
false heart if it be there. Under the careless dis- 
ciple's dirty skin, he may see a promising life, if it 
were only washed. Christ saw through Judas and 
Herod and the Pharisees. He saw through Simon 
Peter. This Simon is at bottom a rock. There 
was considerable trash about the man, — impulse, 
inconsistency, and meaningless talk, — but a rock 
after all. Jesus looked to this at a glance. He 
did not discuss it ; he saw it, he felt it, he knew 
it. This fine quality of mind, tins delicacy, this 
sensitiveness which unconsciously photographs 
character with a look, usually belongs to the more 
subtile minds of women. It is a divine quality. 
Some men have it to a high degree. The Saviour 
had it to an unspeakable degree. His delicate sen- 
sibility, his perfectly sympathetic heart and mind, 
are as impressive as the conscious quicksilver to' 
catch a faultless image of our life, our troubles, our 
fears, and doubts. His being in heaven does not 
impair his power to know us and sympathize with us. 
Therefore He is the true father confessor, the great 
priest, to whom we can go with assurance. We shall 
not be misunderstood. Like the mother's heart — 
far more than the mother's heart — will his instinc- 
tive love respond to each heart pang and fear. 



Twelfth Day of Lent. 45 



£toefft§ ©<^ of BmiL 

n^HERE is no description of heaven in the Bible. 
-*- Even what the Revelation of St. John says of 
it may be regarded as symbolical. There are hints, 
symbols, almost glimpses, but no description. The 
Talmudists described heaven, and made it a gro- 
tesque and ludicrous fairy-land, full of ogres and 
giants. Mahomet described heaven, and made it 
a magnified earth, full of magnified vices and sati- 
ated sensualists. The Bible does not describe 
heaven, because there is no use of describing it 
to us, whose earthly capacities could not grasp it. 
To our immature faculties it is indescribable. Let 
a child see men, give him books about manhood 
to read, yet he has no conception of the emotions, 
the thoughts, the fears, and the hopes of a man. 
Suppose a prophet could have described to Adam 
the nineteenth century. I doubt if Gabriel him- 
self could have made Adam understand the social 
condition, the religious, the political, the mechani- 
cal revolutions, of our day. So would it be impos- 
sible for us to understand heaven, with its vast 
social developments and" its ritual splendors, with 
its mighty, sweeping changes, with its growths 
and evolutions, by which its perfected citizens are 
ever progressing from glory to glory. 



46 Thirteenth Day of Lent. 



G>§\xttznt§ ©a^ of imi. 

"VTATIONS must settle their differences by ar- 
-^ bit-ration instead of war, because we have 
such commercial relations with our antagonists 
that we cannot afford to fight. For the same rea- 
son the differences between the Church and the 
world ought to be settled by arbitration, because of 
the close domestic, social, and financial intimacy 
between them. The Paul of the nineteenth cen- 
tury is a guest in Mammon's house, and Mammon 
publishes his sermon in the morning paper. Yet 
let us never forget that with all these appearances 
of peace there are two distinc J sides. The conflict 
is just as real, the victories are just as glorious, and 
the defeats just as ruinous, as though the conflict 
were a conflict of blood. Tins is the modern, the 
civilized mode of conflict, — the conflict of diplo- 
mates instead of armies, the conflict of pens instead 
of swords, of brains instead of brutal force. Let 
us remember that in this quiet conflict between 
God and Mammon, between truth and falsehood, 
we all bear a part. Let us not be deceived by the 
silence of tilings. Men are borne in silent flight 
to ruin upon the noiseless wing of hellish tenden- 
cies. Let not the moral savor of the world's phil- 
osophy hide from our eyes the hollo wness and 
idolatry which everywhere surround us. We must 



Fourteenth Day of Lent. 47 

conform to modern usage, it is better. Let the 
conflict be a moral fight. But we must never 
for one moment lose sight of its real and vital 
character. Let not the devil escort you to hell 
with a smile. 



§o\xxUtxdfy ©a^ of £tnl 

SOME persons have thought that the highest 
aspiration of a Christian's life is to get to the 
dead level of innocence. They measure their spir- 
itual progress by the question, " How far am I from 
the devil ? " instead of " How near am I to God ? " 
But all of this is merely negative, not positive ; 
destructive, not constructive. Some one has com- 
pared the religious life to moving into a house. 
There are repairs to be made. Perhaps the foun- 
dation timbers are rotten. But when the house is 
repaired it has still to be furnished, and we must 
furnish each one his own spiritual house. Every 
man is the cabinet-maker of his own soul furniture. 
We are the weavers to upholster our own hearts. 
We are the artists to decorate the walls of our own 
imaginations. We are the musicians to make and 
tune the stringed instruments that are to rill our 
lives with melody. If we are idle, our spiritual 
house will be empty and cheerless and musicless. 



48 Fifteenth Day of Lent. 



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OH ALL we prove that it is reasonable for a lawyer 
^ to practise law ? for the farmer to sow seed ? 
for the merchant to buy and sell ? Shall we prove, 
then, that man should do that which he was made 
to do ; that the creature ought to serve the Creator? 
This is his business. If he do not that, he is a fail- 
ure as a man. Even as an animal his success is only 
partial. The deer is swifter, the ass is stronger, 
the sparrow is merrier. As a man he is a failure. 
He may be a success as a clothes-weaver, or as a 
fact-collector, or as a money-gatherer, but as a man, 
as a child of God, as a member of the kingdom of 
heaven, he is a failure. Like a book used for fuel 
— a failure as a book, and poor fuel. It is sad to 
see anything debased to low and sordid ends, which 
was made for high purposes. Here is the hulk of 
a noble ship, used for a wrecker's hut. What a fall 
was there, thou once fair and free-winged rover of 
the sea ! Here is a goodly garden become a swine- 
pen. Miry filth instead of delicate and fragrant 
bloom. Here is a caged eagle with wing broken 
and feathers befouled, hobbling in the dirt. Ah, 
thou king of aerial heights and purity ! But far 
sadder than all is the immortal spirit of man, bound 
by the habits and crippled by the passions of the 
world, — like the lap-wing, crowned with a crown, 
and feeding on dirt. 



Sixteenth Day of Lent. 49 



gfatmtfy ©a^ of &tnl 

/"CHARACTER is a building of which every man 
^-^ is his own architect. Human characters pre- 
sent every variety, from the rickety hovel to the 
Gothic minster. Among great characters there is 
a wide diversity of style. There are Gothic char- 
acters, and composite characters, and Romanesque, 
and Oriental, and classic. We have the classic 
Parthenon, and Addison and Macaulay. We have 
the Roman Coliseum, and Martin Luther. We 
have the Stones of Venice, and Jeremy Taylor. 
We have Edinburgh Castle, and Thomas Carlyle. 
We have Westminster Abbey, and William E. 
Gladstone. We have the Pyramids of Egypt in 
their grand and enduring simplicity, and we have 
Robert E. Lee. John Ruskin tells us there are 
"seven lamps of architecture," or seven princi- 
ples which must enter into every building that 
aspires to true greatness. These principles are 
sacrifice, truth, power, beauty, life, memory, and 
obedience. 

It may be said that that character also is truly 
great in which John Ruskin's seven lamps of archi- 
tecture find their highest development. 

Let architects of material building study the 
Coliseum, where the three orders of Greek archi- 
tecture are found, — Doric in the first story, Ionic 



50 Third Sunday in Lent. 

in the second, and Corinthian in the third ; but let 
character-builders study the life of Jesus Christ, 
that temple in which all of John Ruskin's seven 
lamps of architecture meet in perfect proportion. 



£§irb ^unba^ in &<n\L 

"\T7~ATCH ! Temptation comes as a whipped 
* * foe, and begins to say, " Oh, I am worsted ; 
there is no danger in me." Watch it ! Firemen 
watch the smouldering coals that the wind may 
again inflame. Men watch closely that place in an 
embankment which has once given away. Again, 
temptation comes with a new face, and says, " I 
am not your weakness." Take heed ! Faithful 
Abraham lost his faith, meek Moses was impatient, 
David became sensual, and lion-hearted Peter 
trembled. Again, temptation comes as a child, 
and says, " Oh, I am so little, I cannot do any- 
thing." Watch it! Little temptations are seeds 
of the upas-tree, eggs of the serpent, sleeping 
dynamite. The devil puts the little Oliver Twist 
through the window to open the door for him, the 
big robber. Hell is first lit with shavings. Again, 
temptation comes as a smiling friend, and says, 
" You know me and love me ; fear not." Watch 
it ! The beloved Delilah betrayed the strong Sam- 
son to death. Watch and pray. The sentinel's 



Seventeenth Day of Lent. 51 

power lies in his communication with the power 
that supports him, and then watchfulness. If he 
watch only, he can do nothing when the enemy 
comes. He is one, the enemy is an army. But 
if he too can summon an army, then is his watching 
effective. So is prayer the Christian watchman's 
communication with the powers above him. If he 
watch only, he can do nothing, for he contends 
with principalities and powers and spiritual wicked- 
ness in high places. But if he watch and pray, he, 
too, can summon powers omnipotent to his rescue. 
And prayer is communication with that Power. 



^wntem^ ©a^ of &enl 

SUPPOSE a boy should say, " It is great trouble 
to become a man. I must go to bed four thou- 
sand times, and get up and dress four thousand 
times, and eat twelve thousand meals, before I can 
be a man." We would think the boy foolish ; we 
would say, " Let each day take care of itself." If 
our Christian duties become part of our daily life, 
we will never think of them as burdens. The joy 
and health of growth will repay us for all our ef- 
forts. Growth is its own reward. It is furnishing 
our spiritual house for eternity, it is tuning our 
harps for the harmonies of heaven, it is whetting 
the appetite to feed on angels' food. It is fitting 



52 Eighteenth Day of Lent. 

ourselves for the presence of God. The growth 
of the soul never ceases. The body reaches its 
maturity and then decays,. the mind arises to its 
zenith and then fails. But in the decrepitude of 
age the soul is in its youth. One of the joys of 
heaven will be its continued growth. God's chil- 
dren will not stand still there. Each year they 
will be better, each century stronger, each cycle 
happier than the last. Eternity will be one infinite 
approach to the glorious consummation, " Be ye 
perfect, even as your Father winch is in heaven is 
perfect." 



<&\$tmt% ©ay of &tnl 

HAVE read a story somewhere — I wish some- 
body would tell me where — about some men 
practising a strange revenge upon an enemy. They 
found him alone at a saw-mill deep in a forest. 
They bound him to the carriage of the saw, and, 
adjusting the carriage so that he would reach the 
teeth of the whizzing saw in about half an hour, 
they left him to his fate. With horrible suspense 
he viewed the bloodthirsty avenger, to which, inch 
by inch, he was drawn nearer and nearer. The 
savage foe shrieked, and its fierce teeth gleamed in 
the light. The prostrate victim at last seized this 
faint hope, — perhaps, oh ! perhaps, the teeth of the 
saw would cut the rope and release him before it 



Nineteenth Day of Lent. 53 

killed him. And so the suspense became more in- 
tense as he was drawn nearer still, and the supreme 
question became, "Shall this dreadful assailant be 
my deliverer or my destroyer?" Surely such a 
position of suspense and peril, such hazard, such 
jeopardy, is bad enough to be the revenge of the 
most cruel enemy. But the man who trusts to 
death-bed repentance voluntarily places himself in 
this terrible position. He wilfully places himself 
in a position where it is uncertain whether death, 
the great avenger, will be his deliverer or his de- 
stroyer. He wilfully places his soul in this situa- 
tion of suspense and jeopardy. Nearer and nearer 
his soul draws on to meet the dreadful problem. 



(Ttinttetntfy ©a^ of &tnl 

/~\NE of the most offensive features of atheism 
^^ is that it takes away a man's treasure, and 
gives him no substitute. It robs him without 
equivalent. It merely destroys. Sometimes it is 
good to destroy. If we " pluck a thistle to plant 
a flower," if we destroy a den to build a school, 
if we take a half error out of a man's heart to 
make room for a whole truth, — that is good. But 
wanton destruction is cowardly and base. The 
destroyer, what a despicable creature ! The whole 
brood of them is to be despised, from " the aspir* 



54 Twentieth Day of Lent. 

ing youth who fired the Ephesian dome," down to 
the Puritan iconoclast who robbed Scotland of her 
Gothic splendors. They are to be despised, and 
they are to be challenged. When one comes to 
destroy, have a guaranty from him ; make him 
give bond that he will give better than he takes. 
Destruction requires no greatness, no courage, no 
genius. The low-browed vandal could destroy the 
creations of a Phidias. The fanatic caliph Omar 
could lay waste the literary treasures of Alexan- 
dria, the patient work of centuries. All honor to 
the builder ! Away with the despoiler, the devas- 
tator ! Challenge all who come with critic's scal- 
pel and iconoclast's hammer. Tins is a safe rule 
in religion — safe in anything. 



£to£nfte^ ©ay of &wkL 

"\ /TAN Y men spend their lives building founda- 
-L-*-L tions upon which they never erect any super- 
structure. They spend their lives preparing to 
live, and about the time they get ready to live 
they die. "I must have a fortune," says one; 
"life is not worth living without that." He for- 
sakes society, he cramps his life, he has time for 
neither books nor friendship nor religion. These 
by and by. But his wife dies, his children marry 
and depart, and when at last he is ready, he finds 



Twenty-first Day of Lent. 55 

himself without friends to reward or enemies to 
punish. Another will not begin life until he has 
great learning. But when, at the last, his arsenal 
is filled with ammunition, he awakes to find that 
the enemy has captured his territory. Lawyers 
despise real cases which they have, because they 
are dreaming of large cases which they have not. 
Some neglect a good practice for a precarious polit- 
ical career. Physicians, as a rule, settle early to 
real life, but even some of them make one feel that 
he is being used as a physiological study, to pre- 
pare the doctors for future usefulness. There are 
preachers with whom the country parish is a step- 
ping-stone to the city parish, and the city parish is 
a blind from which to hunt a bishopric. That is 
wrong. Live in the present. Life is not far off. 
We are in it, perhaps near the end of it. 



&\»entyrfixBt ©a^ of &tnt 

r I ^HERE are many men who consider God an 
-*- object of charity, and his Church and minis- 
ters beneficiaries. They say, " Oh, I should like 
to give something, but it is all I can do to meet my 
regular expenses." Now, what I wish, to emphasize 
is that God is not an object of charity, and religion 
is one of your regular expenses, whether you meet 
it or not. You might just as well get flour and 



56 Twenty-second Day of Lent. 

butter at your grocer's, and send your children to 
school, and receive the attentions of a physician, 
and protection from the government, a nd when the 
grocer and the physician and the tax-gatherers bring 
in their bills, say, " Oh, I should like to give you 
something, but it is all I can do to meet my regular 
expenses." You cannot get rid of the obligation 
by staying away from church, for the beneficence 
of religion is so far-reaching that even the scorner 
is compelled to occupy the unamiable position of 
receiving benefits from the very hand that he spits 
upon. 



&mntymox\'b ©a^ of &tnt 

n"^H E entering wedge of the prodigal's ruin was 
-*- a wish — a wish for unhallowed freedom, an 
unhallowed wish for what is only God's, — absolute 
independence. This was the prodigal's sin. It is 
the crying sin of a prodigal and wayward world, 
this claiming legal right to license, this claiming 
legal right to selfish, unrestrained, irresponsible 
use of God's loans, — life, time, strength, intellect, 
culture, beauty, money. Men crave to be gods; 
but independence of God does not make men gods, 
it makes them devils. This is just what made the 
first devils. The angelic sons of God wanted free- 
dom, and the Father let them go, and they left the 
heavenly home and became prodigals and wanderers 



Fourth Sunday in Lent. 57 

forever. God's service is the most perfect freedom. 
It affords the largest amplitude of range, wide 
enough for the freest and boldest wing to fly. Its 
very limitations are intended for protection against 
other bondages, that are cruel and ruinous. 



5outtf$ ^unba^ in &tnt 

" TTOME guards to the front ! " was the cry of 
-* — ■- 'Q5. Look at them, slight lads stooping 
under their heavy muskets, decrepit men tottering 
on with cane in one hand and gun in the other ; 
convalescent, furloughed soldiers rising like a 
wounded war-horse. And has war come to this ? 
Yes, and worse. It has seen the nursing mother, 
and feeble aged women, and delicate girls, defend- 
ing the parapet. The hearth must be protected, 
and the husband, the little lad, and the white-haired 
father are gone, dead, dead in their blood ! Women 
are to the front only because there are no men, none 
at all. But wait ; there is a war for home and fire- 
side, a war for rights more dear and from foes more 
cruel, in which women face its fury, not because 
the men have fallen first, but because men shirk. 
Yes, men shirk the discipline, the hardships, the 
responsibility of this war. Not all men, thank 
God! yet many do. Happy in their homes, re- 
ceiving the blessings of Christianity, they are will- 



58 Twenty-third Day of Lent. 

ing to see the wives and mothers fight the battle. 
The hosts of hell, with black flag unfurled, sur- 
round us, menacing the peace of home, threaten- 
ing slavery and death. With dreadful malice and 
cruelty they contend for every inch of ground. It 
is a battle, remorseless, ceaseless, momentous. It 
appeals to all that is manly in men to take their 
places in it, to submit to its discipline, to endure 
its hardships, to shoulder its responsibility. 



£i»*n^flj«b ©ay of &tnt 

"/^~\UR Father which art in Heaven." God is 
^ more than a " great first cause," more than 
an "inscrutable power." He is a Father. He is 
a heavenly Father. He is our Father. Nothing 
could be more reassuring ; for " behold what man- 
ner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that 
we should be called the sons of God." In all the 
Bible invitations to prayer, there is none so encour- 
aging as this: "If ye, being evil, know how to 
give good gifts to your children, how much more 
shall your Father." Every fatherhood takes its 
meaning and derives its beauty from the Father- 
hood of God. Every home circle is a likeness of 
the heavenly home, of which God is the centre. 
He is the Father, and his is the family after whom 
"every family in heaven and earth is named." 



Twenty-fourth Day of Lent. 59 

This broadens our charity and deepens our human- 
ity. Not "my Father," but "our Father," — mine 
and Jesus Christ's and Mary Magdalene's. From 
such a Father I look for sympathy, instruction, 
correction, and to Him I owe reverence, depend- 
ence, obedience, and imitation, — aye, and fraternity 
with all the children of God. 



£utenfy*fout:$ ©a^ of &tnt. 

"TTALLOWED be Thy name," we say. How 
■*-- *- can we ? How can we hallow that which is 
already perfectly holy? How can we increase 
what is infinitely great ? We cannot. But this 
we can do. Suppose on yonder wall were hung 
one of Raphael's paintings. We could add noth- 
ing to its marvellous beauty, but we might remove 
obstructions. We could improve the light, we 
could give glasses to the near-sighted, we could 
point out beauties to the untutored. So with God. 
We cannot give power to Him who has strewn space 
with worlds. We cannot extend the existence of 
Him who is from everlasting to everlasting. We 
cannot increase the wisdom of Him who paints 
every flower and guides every star. We cannot 
enlarge the providence of Him who 

" Throws open the golden gates of day, 
And draws around a sleeping world 
The dusky curtains of the night." 



60 Twenty-fifth Day of Lent. 

We cannot make Him more merciful, who gave 
his life a ransom for many. But this we can do. 
AVe can use our tongues and our lives to throw 
light upon this wondrous picture. We can remove 
the obstacles of worldliness and sin which prevent 
ourselves and others from seeing it. We can ear- 
nestly labor to educate the hearts of the untutored 
to feel its beauty, its glory, and its power. In this 
way we may hallow the name of God. 



£u>mfy*fiff§ ©aj> of JSmt. 

"HpHY kingdom come." The provinces of God 
-*- extend through heaven and earth and hell. 
" Thy kingdom come," is a fervent prayer that all 
wrong shall be righted everywhere. It is a prayer 
for the militant Church, — that mighty army which, 
in weakness and strength, in success and failure, 
sets its banners against the powers of darkness and 
death. It is a prayer for the protection and devel- 
opment of the Holy of Holies, that Church within 
the Church, that invisible real within the visible 
nominal. It is a prayer for the Church triumphant, 
that the day soon may dawn when " He shall have 
put down all rule and all authority and power, and 
deliver up the kingdom to the Father, that God 
may be all in all." Thy kingdom come, O God, 
to shorten the day of death, to drive darkness from 



Twenty-sixth Day of Lent. 61 

the earth, and, like the rising sun, dispel the deeds 
and fears of night ! 

A myriad voices, from a myriad lands, in a 
myriad tongues, seem to say, " The kingdom of 
God is at hand." Even so, come, Lord Jesus, — 
come quickly. 



&y»wdy**wt§ ©a^ of &ent 

"TpHY will be done." The commander lays out 
-*- his plan, and every mysterious order, every 
seemingly useless march and countermarch, every 
hard-fought battle, every apparently cruel execu- 
tion or heartless act, every diplomatic measure, 
subserves to develop this plan, and bring it to its 
issue. So with Him " who ruleth over all." He 
has his plan. Every mysterious providence, every 
evolution of nature, every suffering saint, every 
ebb and flow of the Church's life and fortune, 
secretly but surely brings that plan to its perfect 
consummation. In this Divine Will we may be 
cheerful contributors, or compelled and unwilling 
agents. In the triumphant procession of God we 
may, we must, take a part, either by swelling the 
chorus or by following the chariot-wheels in cap- 
tive's chains. " Thy will be done," is the cry of 
acquiescence. Submission does not mean insen- 
sibility. Grace makes the heart more tender. 
Those who submit most patiently suffer most 



62 Twenty-seventh Day of Lent. 

keenly and feel most deeply. When the Christian 
mother, in the silent hours of night, sees in fever- 
ish dreams her dead babe near her still, and, wak- 
ing, finds the pillow empty, we thank God that 
she can weep. Tears are God's gift. Among the 
gems of the Bible are the tears of Job and David 
and Jesus. Submission is seeing, through our 
tears, the merciful hand of God. 



&)vtntym»tnt§ ©ay of £tnt 

"/^\IVE us this day our daily bread." This day 
v -^ implies regular and constant prayer. Bread 
implies the necessities, not the dainties of life. 
Daily bread implies present needs, not future 
accumulations. Our daily bread means that the 
channel of God's gifts shall be our own efforts. 
Give us, means that though we plant and water, 
God must give the increase. Give us, not give 
me, means that we must live and let live. He 
who can say all of this prayer is a happy man. 
He has settled in his own heart the problem of 
bread, for which the socialist is demanding a solu- 
tion. He has armed himself against discontent. 

I have read of a child whose destitute mother 
was trying to shelter it from the winter's blast. 
They had gotten in a stack of straw, and were 
fortunate enough to find an old barn door, which 



Twenty-eighth Day of Lent. 63 

they had pulled over their dry nest. As the sleet 
and rain beat upon the door, and the wind howled 
through the dark night, the little one snuggled 
close, and putting her hand to her mother's cheek, 
for she could not see her, she whispered, — 

" Isn't God good, mother, to give us this warm 
bed to-night ? and aren't you sorry, mother, for the 
poor people out in the rain and the dark ? " 

Ah me ! let us learn, in whatsoever state we 
are, to be therewith content. Hid in the hollow 
of his hand, we shall be sheltered from the storm- 
winds of all overwhelming evil. 



$tetntytig$f$ ©ay of &tnt 

"XpORGIVE us our trespasses, as we forgive 
-*- those who trespass against us." Jesus 
preached a sermon on this. In the parable of 
the forgiven, unforgiving servant, He gives us a 
picture of the impudence and hideousness of 
unforgiveness. It is a strong, vivid picture, that 
frightens us, and we exclaim, " Lord, is it I ? " 
There are some men — poor fellow-travellers to 
the grave — whose step is so different from our 
step that we cannot walk with them. But, surely, 
there is no fellow-servant in sorrow, in sin and 
in weakness, whom we cannot forgive from the 
heart, while every day and hour we must crave 



64 Fifth Sunday in Lent. 

pardon from his Father and my Father, from his 
King as well as mine. Unforgiveness is disown- 
ing the mother that bore us free-born sons into 
the light and liberty of pardon. Refusing to for- 
give is like clambering upon some good rock to 
save myself from the angry sea, and then refusing 
to assist, refusing even to permit, another strug- 
gling mortal to climb upon it, claiming it as our 
right. 

There is still another picture which Jesus has 
given us, which is the very climax of all that can 
be said or thought on the subject of forgiveness. 
After years of persistent persecution, misrepresen- 
tation, hatred, abuse, and insult, He watched his 
triumphant, intolerant enemies drive the nails 
through his quivering flesh, and prayed, " Father, 
forgive them, they know not what they do." 

Yet He never had need to ask forgiveness for 
Himself. We must every day. 



$\ft$ gunbay in &tnt 

"T EAD us not into temptation." This petition 
-■-^ comes naturally after the prayer for forgive- 
ness. When a man wakes up to see hanging over 
him the spectre of sin. — unable to move, almost 

losing breath under the oppression of guilt, he 

cries aloud, - Forgive, oh, forgive ! " When, then, 



Twenty-ninth Day of Lent. 65 

the Lord comes to rescue him, to remove the 
weight, and he arises a free man, and catches a 
full breath of God's forgiveness, his first impulsive 
wish is that he shall not get into the same distress 
again. After the prayer " Forgive," comes the 
prayer " Lead us not into temptation." This is a 
terse and striking way of saying, " Father, lead us, 
lest we fall into temptation." 

Give thy heart to God's leading, and the devil 
will keep out of the way. Keep the ear of thy 
conscience sensitive, so that thou mayst hear the 
still small voice saying to thee, " This is the way, 
walk ye in it." Go when grace calls thee, and 
where it directs thee. 

Christian perfection lies in this: first, to skill 
the conscience to hear the Spirit's gentle voice, 
and then to obey. In all thy ways remember Him, 
and He will direct thy paths. Father, lead us, 
lest we fall into temptation. 



£u>tttfymin$ Stay of &tnt 

"~P\ELIVER us from evil." What disaster hath 
-*-* the devil wrought ! What a train of evils ! 
The daily newspaper is the record of the world's 
sin and sorrow and tragedy. What instances of 
depravity ; what depths of hellish lust; what hor- 
rible murder; what sickening accidents ; what 



66 Thirtieth Day of Lent. 

heart-breaking want ; what sin ; what crime ! No 
man can tell what a day may bring forth. One 
begins the day in prosperity, and ends it in despair. 
The sun rises upon a family with fair promises of 
peace, and sets on their broken idols. A mother 
kisses the red cheeks of her buoyant boy in the 
morning, and at eventide kisses the cold lips of 
his corpse. To-day our hearts swell with pride, 
to-morrow our heads bend in disgrace. You 
say this is pessimistic. Be it so. But all of these 
things happen every day. God in his mercy grant 
that they may not happen to us ! Deliver us from 
evil ! Whether this evil mean the Evil One, or his 
evil work, is not worth discussing. One is but 
part and parcel of the other. All evil comes from 
sin, and all sin comes from the devil. God deliver 
us from them all ! 



tfyxxtkty ©ay of £tnl 

T^vE Proftjxdis ! " Out of the depths have I 
-*-^ called unto thee, O Lord." These are the 
words of some unknown but true poet. It is a 
prayer ; short, direct, intense, coming from some 
heart of godly power ; not rhetorical, but eloquent. 
Not wreathing to the heavens like blue smoke to 
be scattered by the winds, but ejaculated from 
some rebounding soul, long bent, it pierces the 
sky like an arrow. This is a voice, unknown yet 



Thirty-first Day of Lent. 67 

human, crying from the depth of some divine 
despair. Our hearts respond to its pathos. We 
know that it is not a perfunctory prayer that 
comes from the depths, but a cry. Afflictions give 
fervor and boldness to prayer. Affliction makes 
men earnest. Affliction is faith's element ; as 
the life-boat which decays upon the shore and 
in the sunshine, triumphs on the breast of storms. 
I believe that every true Christian can look back 
over the past, and see in the depth of some great 
darkness, the memory and light of a fervid prayer, 
shining like a star. And the influence of such a 
prayer is never lost. Having once looked from 
the pit into the face of God, we can never wholly 
forget Him. It is our Gethsemane prayers that 
bring the angels. 



&§\xty*\\x*t ©d)> of &&\L 

/~\H, the life and strength and hopefulness and 
^-^ joyousness and buoyancy and exuberance of 
youth ! We are young but once. We can have 
but one springtime. Springtime is the time for 
flowers, but it is also the seedtime. We would 
not like to see a young farmer who feels no pleas- 
ure when the first trailing arbutus breaks through 
the snow, or whose heart does not bound when the 
chirp of the robin first falls on his ear. But we 
think it will be all the sweeter to him if the flower 



68 Thirty-second Day of Lent. 

greets him as he rides through the woods to his 
work, or if he hears the bird's morning hymn as 
he walks behind his plough. So will the flowers and 
songs and loves of youth be sweeter when they 
come in the intervals of labor, and among the pur- 
poses and efforts to do something good and worthy 
of strong young manhood. Youth will never 
come back to you, but you will carry much of its 
light and joy with you through life. Your sum- 
mer, your autumn, and even the winter of your 
life, will be ever bringing forth the stored-up fruits 
of a well-spent springtime. 



€§\ttymonb ©a^ of &tnl 

WE ought to encourage whatever increases or 
preserves reverence among our people. We 
are in danger of being a nation of iconoclasts. 
With unholy hands men tear down the monuments 
of the past, and nothing escapes their insatiable 
curiosity. They tear to pieces whatever is lovely, 
as the botanist tears in tatters the beautiful flowers, 
or as the smith melts in his crucible the graceful 
vase. God forbid that the spirit of inquiry should 
cease ! Let it go on. Yet is not this dissection, 
this analysis of everything, in danger of destroying 
the romance and poetry of life? But you say, 
"Better truth than poetry." May we not have 



Thirty-third Day of Lent. 69 

both ? Is there any reason why the practical man 
should not have a soul, or why the scientist should 
not have a human heart? What I am speaking 
against is that unnatural insensibility, that affected 
sang-froid, that dry-eyes-and-cold-heart utilitarian- 
ism, which says that emotion is weakness and rev- 
erence is womanish. They are thoroughly practi- 
cal. The splendid cathedral is a waste of money ; 
Niagara is a mere water-power ; Mammoth Cave 
is a mushroom garden ; the Rhine is a steamboat 
canal ; the Alleghanies are obstacles that ought to 
be dug down ; the galleries of genius ought to be 
converted into factories ; the performance of pro- 
found symphonies is a time to giggle and talk ; 
friendship is a relic, and love is a dream, — this is 
what I protest against. 



&§\xtyt§\xb Sag of £tn& 

" There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." 

STAND in a church spire. It has four windows, 
looking north, south, east, and west. From 
one we see the ocean, from one the city, from one 
the fields and farms, from the other the mountains. 
I once stood in a dome, with different colored glass 
in each window. Thus four men touching each 
other might see each a different scene ; a red 



70 Thirty-fourth Day of Lent. 

ocean, a green city, blue fields, and yellow moun- 
tains. A rare man might climb to the top of the 
dome, and see the whole circle of the landscape 
under the white light of a pure atmosphere. But 
most of us look through one window, each upon a 
different world, each world colored by our own 
individuality. Four men in one street-car buy 
the morning papers. A moment later one is read- 
ing the editorial on politics, another the quotations 
of the cotton markat, another the society column, 
another a report of a Sunday-school convention. 
Four men sitting side by side, and each living in 
a separate world. One man not dreaming of many 
things in heaven and earth that are the very life 
of other men ; one looking upon the sea of com- 
merce ; another upon the fields of agriculture ; 
another upon the city of Vanity Fair, not dream- 
ing of the Celestial mountains. They are there, 
however. 



$$irtyfou¥f$ ©<*2 of &tnl 

r I ^HE walls of the great palace at Versailles are 
-*- covered with paintings of battles. The Bastille, 
Jena, Austerlitz, the Pyramids ! Agony, passion, 
and death ! Heroism and victory ! One grows 
weary with the endless profusion of art. He sits 
down at last on the casement of a little window. 
He looks out. Here, too, is a picture. Peaceful 



Sixth Sunday in Lent. 71 

France, with its green grass, its forests and fields, 
and its church tower beyond the placid lake. 

The book of Ruth is such a little window amidst 
the historical pictures, the battle pieces of Israel. 
Through this window we see the home life which 
the pictures have hidden — godliness, unselfish- 
ness, love and peace. Is it not well for us to turn 
from the historic, the heroic, and, through some 
rift, take a swift, sweet glimpse of the pastoral 
and domestic scenes of life ? We read of Sisera's 
murder and Jephthah's vow and Samson's revenge, 
and we think ill of Israel. Ruth gives us another 
view and a truer view. It is not for books and 
newspapers to publish what is ordinary and com- 
monplace. They publish the remarkable, the won- 
derful. The very fact that a matter is publishable, 
is fair evidence that it is exceptional. Let us 
remember this. Let us remember that little Ruth 
is the rule, and not the exception. Thus, we will 
think better of Israel and of all the world. 



^\\t§ §Mxb(ty in &znl 

rpHERE have been times when the drama was 
-*- used as a moral and religious power. A crime 
enacted before them may have such an effect as to 
make the beholders absolutely safe from the com- 
mittal of that crime. It is morally impossible for 



72 Sixth Sunday in Lent. 

one to do that for which his soul has conceived a 
thorough revulsion. Thus were the angels of God 
permitted to witness the historical drama of sin 
and redemption. They were free moral agents. 
They could fall, as angels had fallen before. But 
they became spectators of this mighty tragedy. It 
unfolds and progresses scene by scene, and act by 
act. They see the ravages of sin, — Eve's tears, 
Abel's blood, Sodom's flames. Disease, suffering, 
and death reign. Depravity, abandoned and shame- 
less, holds high carnival. The plot thickens. The 
Son of God comes down ; the shadows of the cross 
fall over the scene ; pride, ingratitude, and hate 
reject the God of gods ; the heartless earth drinks 
His blood ! All these scenes the angels see. Their 
holy minds are filled with dismay, with aversion 
and heart-sick loathing of sin. Though free 
agents still, there is no longer even a possibility 
of another rebellion in heaven. If, then, this 
tragedy upon the stage of this very earth pro- 
duced an ineffaceable impression upon the intelli- 
gences above, what an influence for piety and 
purity should it have upon us, for whose happi- 
ness and welfare this divine drama was permitted 
to be enacted ? 



Monday before Easter. 73 



r HAVE heard a criminal speak of his mother, 
-*- and his lip quivered like a child's. Mother ! 
Who gets beyond the power of that word ? Who 
forgets his mother? What face in the medley 
picture of the past is so venerated as hers ? Who 
weeps over our sins and misfortunes as she does ? 
What heart feels like hers? Whose hand soothes 
like hers ? Whose voice sinks to softer tones ? 
Can you match her fidelity, her patience, her 
prayers? In the darkened sick-room, in the 
descending shadow of death, at the lonely grave, 
oh, my mother, there is no soft step, no tender eye, 
no warm tear like thine ! To say, then, that the 
Church is my Mother, is to say all. She takes me 
at my birth. She places upon me a diadem ; the 
jewelled drops from the baptismal font sparkle on 
my brow. She teaches me the form of sound 
words. She-vows me to a holy life. She feeds 
me with angels' food. She puts in my hand the 
trembling fingers of my bride. She watches over 
the changes and chances of my life. She keeps 
her vigil through the painful hours of my illness. 
Her words of supplication go up to God with my 
departing soul. She meets my pale body and 
bears it to the grave. And ever, year by year, 
she cheers my bereft ones with songs of immortal 



74 Tuesday before Easter. 

hope. Oh, my Mother, how could I live in this 
sinful, sorrowful world without thee ? Oh, holy 
Bride of Christ, I love thee, I bless thee, I thank 
God that He has sent thee to love me, and bless 
me, and to be my Mother ! 



~\ \TITHOUT Christ, hope is the falsest will-o'- 
* * the-wisp that ever lured to death the fainting 
soul of man. Men and women with hearts, think 
of a world without Christ ! No Christ, and your 
mother's aged feet totter into a remorseless grave, 
from whose darkness no ray shines. No Christ, 
and the golden heads gathered around your knee 
are forced away forever by death's cold hand ere 
long. No Christ, and your own life is a quick 
transit, marked by successive birthday milestones 
— out, out into the starless deep. No Christ! 
Think of it when crape hangs upon the door and 
light goes out of the home. No Christ, and to 
whom shall the burdened widow go, and the down- 
trodden and the weary and the heavy laden ? To 
whom shall dying eyes be turned? Without 
Christ, what is sweetest and most beautiful in so- 
cial and domestic life is lost. Eliminate Him, and 
what must you do ? Tell the rosy, white-robed 
child to prattle its pretty prayer at your knee no 



Wednesday before Easter. 75 

more. Close the Sunday-school and hush its joyous 
anthems. Hang the Christian harp upon the 
willows, with its "Rock of Ages" and "Jesus, 
lover of my soul." Clasp the Bible, the dear old 
book; abolish the Lord's holy day; demolish the 
churches, those beautiful sermons in stone ; speak 
no words of cheer to the dying ; utter no tender 
words of hope at the grave; place no Christian 
symbols on the coffin — no resurrection wreath, 
no anchor, no crown ; efface the sentiments of an- 
ticipation from the tomb. No Christ! Then the 
heroism of Christian history from stake and dun- 
geon is a pitiable lie ! No Christ ! Then " might is 
right," will be the world's law, expediency its 
morality, blasted love its present portion, and 
death eternal its certain doom. 



Tto&ntffoay Before <&<x*ttx. 

" n^HE headstone of tHe corner " is a keystone. 
A keystone is the wedge-shaped stone which 
keys or binds together the sides of an arch at its 
top. There is an ancient story that the temple- 
builders, in absence of the architect, threw away 
a keystone because of its peculiar shape. It would 
not tit anywhere in the walls. Finally its proper 
place was found, and it was raised to the top of 
the arch. " The stone which the builders rejected 



76 Wednesday before Easter. 

became the head of the corner," the keystone of 
the arch. A beautiful illustration, frequently 
used, of the rejection and exaltation of Christ. 
The rejection adds lustre to the glory. Every 
rejection of Christ turns out the same way : 
whether rejected by Caiaphas, or Nero, or Herbert 
Spencer, or Paris Commune, He is ever found, ever 
raised, ever placed higher in the fabric, the head- 
stone of the arch. He has no other place. He 
fits nowhere else. He is not one fine stone along 
with the rest, Confucius, Buddha, and Mahomet. 
He is the keystone, different in kind from the rest. 
This or nothing. His place is at the top. The 
whole fabric of history holds Him up to view. lie 
binds together the arch. Without Him the arch 
must fall in. Without Him the arch is an unsolved 
problem. He is the keystone, He solves the prob- 
lem and locks the arch. He is the keystone of 
history. Previous history comes up to Him on one 
side, and subsequent history on the other side, and 
He unites them. He is the centre of history. He 
is the keystone of religion. Religion is the arch 
which bridges the chasm between heaven and 
earth. The arch, the bridge, cannot be complete 
without the kej^stone. The God-man touches each 
side : his divinity touches the heaven side, his hu- 
manity touches the earth side, and the arch is 
completed, the bridge is effected. Heaven and 
earth are brought together. 



Thursday before Easter. 77 



TTTHEN the earnest Christian kneels at the 
^ ^ altar to take the consecrated cup, he per- 
forms a sixfold act. It is an act of obedience. 



honored custom only, but a command — explicit, 
emphatic. 

' ' Ours not to reason why, 

Ours not to make reply, 

Ours but to do or die." 

It is also an act of remembrance. Not that Christ 
needed a memorial, but that we needed a memory. 
A remembered face may go with a child through 
life, to smile upon his virtues and weep over his 
vices. Memory is an angel — sometimes an angel 
with drawn sword. " In remembrance of Me." 
This is light for the pathway, this is strength for 
the soul. The holy communion is an act of 
thanksgiving — a eucharist. This is worthy. Na- 
tions honor themselves in honoring their heroes. 
Thus Garibaldi is honored in Italy, Luther in 
Germany, Napoleon in France. Thus Italy and 
France and Germany and all Christian people 
honor the world's Hero, the world's Saviour, in this 
sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, in this eucha- 
ristic feast. It is also an act of fellowship — a 
communion. We join with angels and archangels 



78 Good Friday. 

and all the company of heaven and of earth to 
magnify the glorious name of God. It is an act 
of testimony. Every celebration of this sacrament 
is one new link in the continuous chain of testi- 
mony that comes down through the ages from the 
upper chamber of Jerusalem. Every hand that 
takes this bread and cup joins hands with the un- 
broken chain of priestly hands that reach back to the 
pierced hands of Jesus. It is an act of expectancy. 
We show forth the Lord's death till he come. 
We look back, and we look forward " till he come." 
It is going up to the altar on the mountain-top 
and looking to the eastern sky to see if there be 
any sign of the coming dawn. 



<5oob 5*tt )a 2* 

« rpHE precious blood." St. Peter calls it that. 
Once that blood had seemed to him more 
ghastly and hideous than shed human blood ever 
seemed before. Now it is precious. No other 
word describes the tenderness which he feels when 
he thinks of the blood of Jesus. He says, " Ye 
were not redeemed with corruptible things as 
silver and gold, but with the precious blood of 
Christ." Redeemed ! A man is overtaken by 
misfortune. In deep distress, in dire necessity, he 
pawns a little gem that once adorned a loved hand 



Good Friday. 79 

now clasped in death. He creeps back day by day 
to see if his treasure is still in the window. He 
toils and pinches, until at last one day he puts 
down the hard-earned coin that buys back his 
treasure. Redeemed ! Redeemed means bought 
back, reclaimed, the lost found, the dead alive 
again. We are redeemed; but not with corrupti- 
ble things as silver and gold. If gold could have 
redeemed us, God would have turned a thousand 
suns into furnaces and cast the gold from a million 
worlds into their burning bosoms, and poured a 
molten river at the feet of Justice. But Justice 
demands the blood. "Without the shedding of 
blood there is no remission." God gives the blood 
— precious indeed; doubly his own. Is your 
child's blood soaking on the battlefield a precious 
price for liberty ? This blood on Calvary is the 
blood of the Son of God. Is the governor's par- 
don precious to the prisoner in the dark, damp 
dungeon ? More precious far is the blood-bought 
ransom that sets free the sin-bound soul. Does 
the sick and penniless prodigal seize with eager 
joy the pass that bears him back over the wide sea 
to his home ? More precious still the covenant of 
blood which bears the soul over cold death's dark 
waves and admits him to his home with God. 



80 Easter Even. 



<&<\&ttt (Etoen, 



"TTTHAT a power negative may have ! Eye 
v * hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor heart con- 
ceived, what God hath prepared for those who love 
Him ! How expressive that is ! What hath man's 
eye not seen ? What beauty ? We have seen our 
own fair-haired boy sleeping in the moonlight ; we 
have seen Niagara's rainbows, and the Jungfrau's 
snow crown; we have seen the sleeping Como 
waked by the coming dawn and blush. But eye 
hath not seen it.' — What hath ear not heard? 
What melody ? We have heard the warble and 
chirp and trill, the matins of the fields, and the 
evensong of the woods ; we have heard, borne on 
memory's wing, the dear, sad voice of the loved 
and lost; we have heard the waves clash their 
timbrels, and the wind's bugle blast, and the deep 

cadence of the sea. But ear hath not heard it ! 

What hath not the heart conceived ? What power 
and pomp of wealth hath it gathered in its imagin- 
ation ! What scenes of pleasure, what ecstasies 
of love, hath it seized with its fancy ! But neither 
hath the heart of man conceived the things which 
God hath prepared for those who love Him. May 
we all love Him more and more. 



Easter Day. 81 



/CHRIST was the Son of Gocl when Tie was 
^-^ spit upon by slaves, but who could believe it? 
He was the Son of God when bleeding upon the 
cross, but who could realize it ? The resurrection 
declared His Sonship. " He was declared to be the 
Son of God by the resurrection from the dead." 
Then the sun which had been shining behind clouds 
burst forth to sight. Man's heart revives at the 
sight. He rejoiceth in the manifestation of the 
Son of God. Of course it was not possible for 
Christ to be holden of death. But man did not 
know this. His death seemed to end all, to 
quench all light. The fond hope " that this had 
been He which should have redeemed Israel " was 
resigned with a despairing heart. Nothing short 
of the resurrection could have restored their con- 
fidence. Nothing short of this could have refuted 
the charge, " Himself he cannot save." Only the 
resurrection could have sustained men's belief in 
Him as a Saviour. But the resurrection declared 
Him to be the Son of God, and brought back the 
sunlight to men's souls. It decorated the Church's 
altars with the opening flowers of hope, and filled 
her mouth with everlasting songs. It sent the 
Church Militant marching on to meet the Church 
Triumphant. It discovered to the eyes of faith 



82 Easter Monday. 

the incorruption and glory and power of the 
spiritual body; and to the eyes of hope, the day 
when our vile bodies shall be changed and made 
like to Christ's glorious body. It turns the sombre 
awe of the Mosaic Sabbath into the holy joy of the 
Christian Sunday, and changes the Babel tongues 
of sectarian variance into the Easter anthem, sung 
in unison, " Christ the Lord is risen to-day ! " 
And both Sunday and Easter become foretastes of 
that blessed day which shall bring to pass the say- 
ing that is written, "Death is swallowed up in 
victory." 



"IV /TARY!" the word was pronounced by lips 
-1-*-*- that had once been closed in death. May 
we not hope for as much in the future ? Again 
those accents so familiar, so characteristic, will 
fall upon our ear. Our name shall be spoken, 
and then the realit} r , great and joyous, of eterni- 
ty's unbroken love will fill our souls. Like 
Mary at the sepulchre, we shall forget the angelic 
forms about us, while with bewildered rapture we 
drink in the melody of a well-known voice which 
calls us "son" or "daughter," "brother" or 
"sister," "husband" or "wife," "father" or 
"mother" or "friend." Well may we sing an- 
thems and chant Te Deums upon Easter Day, for 



Easter Tuesday. 83 

it teaches us that our cemeteries are but the vast 
bed-chambers of sleepers who shall wake with the 
morning. This is the day which proclaims that 
God, who made man out of dust, will again raise 
the dead dust into living and familiar forms. This 
is the day which declares that we shall again touch 
the vanished hand, and hear the sound of a voice 
that is still, and the tender grace of a day that is 
dead will come back with all of its good and none 
of its evil ; with all of its gladness and none of its 
grief ; with all of its love, and none of those things 
which in this world frequently make love so cruel, 
so heart-breaking. 



<&a&ttt &Ut8bty. 



A S the dying seed becomes the plumed and 
-£^- fruitful tree, as the mouldering chrysalis 
becomes a winged and radiant creature, so our 
vile bodies shall be changed and made like unto 
Christ's glorious body. Our bodies ! " These 
eyes shall behold, and not another." Bodies very 
different, yet identical. I have the same body 
that once lay a chubby babe asleep in its cradle. 
This is the same body that shall totter, weak and 
broken, to the grave. And it is the same body 
that shall stand before the judgment seat of Christ. 
The material particles ever changing, the identity 



84 First Sunday after Easter. 

ever unquestioned. Marcus Aurelius had five 
Christians burnt — a bishop, a deacon, a physician, 
a slave, and a child. He mixed their ashes and 
threw them into the sea. But Marcus Aurelius 
cannot frustrate God. The Creator can gather up 
particles whence he will, and clothe the living, 
self-conscious, undying soul with its own bod} r , 
perfected and spiritualized. When God says, 
" Come again, ye children of men ! " then will 
they come. The sailor from the coral reef, the 
soldier bleaching on the desert, the martyrs' dust, 
shall not be forgotten then. The ashes which 
Marcus Aurelius mixed with the waters, the dry 
dust from marble urns, the mummied dead from 
vault and pyramid, the men of olden time, proph- 
ets and sages, kings and warriors, David and Saul, 
Pilate and Judas, Peter and John, Nero and Marcus 
Aurelius, Luther and Hugh Latimer, you and I, 
will be there. 



~T IKE a coronation crown robbed of its jewels, 
-*--* so is the Gospel divested of the divinity of 
Christ. It is true there is pure gold left in the 
moral teaching and the matchless precept, but gap- 
ing cavities show where once the chief glory 
shone. Nor is the Gospel alone mutilated by 
denying the divinity of Jesus. The character of 



Second Sunday after Easter. 85 

Jesus as a man is brought down from a calm, con- 
sistent teacher, to a sincere, insane enthusiast. 
From divinity to insanity ! that is an awful de- 
scent. But there is no alternative. Not only is 
the Gospel and the character of Jesus mutilated 
by a denial of his divinity, but my relation to Him 
is desolated. I find that I cannot touch the 
divinity of Jesus without touching my respect for 
his person. I might respect Him if He were a 
prophet like Moses or Elijah, or if He were a hero 
like Charlemagne or Luther. But as one who 
made the claims that He made, as one who demands 
my whole heart and my adoration, I must give 
Him that or nothing — or at most a tear. With- 
out Christ's divinity my life's light dims, my love 
chills, ray hope fades, the sunlight dies out of the 
spiritual landscape and all things lose their clear- 
ness in the universal shadow. 



A T our birth our bodies become a battle-ground 
-^- between life and death. During the first 
ten years death makes many conquests. At ten 
years death begins to fall back. At twenty life is 
triumphant. At thirty life foresees the future. 
At forty the battle is hot. At fifty death inflicts 
some wounds and life begins an orderly retreat. 



86 Third Sunday after Easter. 

At sixty life feels her strength failing. At seventy 
the retreat becomes a rout. At eighty death 
waves the black flag and cries, " No quarter ! " 
This is no fancy picture. It is no preacher's dream. 
It is a fact undeniable, inevitable, universal ! In- 
difference cannot affect its certainty, and scepticism 
cannot refute its truth. There is only one other fact 
with which we can confront this fact of death, and 
that is the resurrection of Jesus. Here fact meets 
fact. That is what we demand. We want a fact, 
a case, an instance, one single instance of resurrec- 
tion. Once a sea-captain found his crew on shore 
apparently dead. The surgeon took one of the 
men and applied remedies, and the poisoned man 
stood on his feet. The captain shouted with joy, 
for in that one risen man he saw the possibility to 
save them all. So Christ brings life and immor- 
tality to light. His resurrection is not metaphysics, 
but history. Not a speculation for the future, but 
a fact of the past. Not a problem to be solved, 
but the solution of all problems. 



&§\xb ^utibay affev faster. 

A T the completion of an arduous work we 
assemble to commemorate the glad event. 
Magnates and officials meet to drive with great 
Selat the last spike which completes a great rail- 
way system. Owners and makers gather together 



Third Sunday after Easter. 87 

with flying flags to launch a mighty ship. When 
the great work of world-building was done, when 
man, the last crowning creation, was evolved, when 
all was inspected and found to be very good, the 
Triune Creator commemorated the completion of 
the stupendous work by observing the first Sabbath 
day. 

It was not until thousands of years after this 
that this commemoration was on Sinai crystallized 
into a law. Thousands of years again rolled by, 
and this Sabbath was superseded by the Christian 
Sunday. The Sabbath commemorated the comple- 
tion of the work of creation ; Sunday commemo- 
rates the completion of the work of redemption. 
And as redemption is greater than creation, Sun- 
day is greater than the Sabbath. You ask, Can 
any work be greater than creation ? What wisdom, 
what goodness, what power are seen in the devel- 
opment, the unfolding, the ever-opening plan of 
creation ! The persistent on-going of the universe 
to the strains of " upward and onward." Yet re- 
demption is greater. For God could sit upon his 
throne in joy and wave up with the wand of 
omnipotence the successive stages of the world's 
development. But in the work of redemption He 
got down from his throne, got down to the form 
of a servant, got down under the heavy cross, got 
down to the dust of death. Oh, it was an arduous 
work even for the Omnipotent One. And when 
the Easter morning dawned at last ; when Christ 



88 Fourth Sunday after Easter. 

came up from the place of departed spirits ; when 
He came up from the last hard effort of his great 
and completed work, the Church, unbid, but with 
a universal impulse, said : We will rest with our 
Saviour ; his Sabbath shall be our Sabbath ; it is 
the Lord's Day, and it shall be our day forever. 



HAVE you friends whither you go beyond 
the sea ? You leave good friends behind ; 
they watch your frail bark descend the pathless 
main and sink below the ocean's rim. But, on 
that strange and distant shore, who awaits your 
coming? Acquaintances, relatives, familiar forms 
have gone before you. But are there any there 
who are safe and happy because you helped them 
heavenward? Are there any who have a smile of 
recognition and a hand to welcome you, as one of 
the holy influences that bore them to that shining 
shore ? Have you helped to save a soul ? Have 
you used this fleeting world, this unrighteous 
mammon, to make spiritual friends, who, when 
you fail in death, shall receive you into everlasting 
habitations ? 

Will a winged seraph meet you with the cry, 
" I am the poor man whom you welcomed to your 
pew " ? 



Fourth Sunday after Easter. 89 

Will a radiant cherub hail you, poor ship- 
wrecked sailor, as " my beloved Sunday-school 
teacher " ? 

Will a sainted spirit clasp your hand and say, 
" I am the outcast whom your sisterly sympathy 
led to the Magdalen's Saviour " ? 

Will some humble worshipper say to your trem- 
bling soul, " I am the agnostic whom you showed 
God by your godly life " ? 

Will some white-robed chorister say, " I was the 
blasphemer whom you taught reverence " ? 

Would still another, " I was the drunkard 
whom you reformed " ? 

Welcome ! welcome ! to the everlasting habita- 
tions ! The original has " everlasting tents," a 
beautiful allusion to the dear old tent life of 
ancient Israel,, glorified and perpetuated in the 
eternal future. Welcome ! welcome to the everlast- 
ing tents ! And if in wonder you exclaim, " What 
authority have you to receive me thus, and who 
is he who gave you this authority? " then shall 
the Son himself advance from their midst and say, 
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the 
least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto 
Me." 



90 Fifth Sunday after Easter. 



TT is a matter of small importance how a man 
dies. If he is prepared, if he is a Christian, 
it matters not how he goes to his crown. There 
have been some triumphant deaths, some wonder- 
ful deaths, before which the gates of Paradise seem 
to swing open and flood them with light, and the 
superior splendor of the invisible turned the dying 
hour into the souls' nuptials. Such were the 
deaths of St. Stephen and Polycarp, of Latimer 
and Payson and Hervey, and of some known to 
you and to me. But such angels' visits to the 
dying couch are few and far between. Most souls 
go out in clouds or storms ; in unconsciousness or 
pain. But what does it matter ? The only sin- 
less soul that ever descended the valley of the 
shadow of death cried from the Stygian darkness 
and solitude, " My God, my God, why hast thou 
forsaken me ? " But in that hour he conquered. 
He vanquished death and robbed the grave of its 
victory. What does it matter, then, if we follow 
Him through the darkness to the light, through 
the battle to the triumph? What does it matter 
if I tremble ? Underneath me are the everlasting 
arms. What does it matter if I cannot see ? He 
is leading me through the ebon shades. What 
does it matter if I seem alone ? He goes with me 



Fifth Sunday after Easter. 91 

as He has gone so often with others before, through 
what seem the untrod solitudes of death. 

My feelings do not help me much, and my fears 
cannot hurt me at all. I am not borne to safety 
on the feeble wings of my own emotions, nor am 
I hindered by those 

" Spectre doubts that roll 
Cimmerian darkness o'er the parting soul. 1 ' 

The last hour of the laborer's summer day may 
be hot and weary, but the rest of eventide will be 
sweet, and the night will be cool. 

The last mile of the homeward journey may 
burn the traveller's bleeding feet, but love and 
welcome will soothe the pain, and wipe the pil- 
grim's brow. 

As we approach the land, the winds may be 
boisterous,- and the waves break loud upon the 
rocky coast, but the harbor will throw its pro- 
tecting arms around the home-bound ship, and we 
shall be safe. 

The last charge of the battle may be the bloodi- 
est and the cruelest, but it brings the victory and 
the peace. 

The fury of disappointed fiends may be the 
most desperate, and their last assault upon my 
escaping soul the fiercest, but it is the last ; it is 
the last. " Let me die the death of the righteous, 
and let my last end be like his " — an end of pain, 
of tears, of sin, and of death. 



92 Ascension Day, 



(&0cen0ton ©a^ 

TN public, in the daylight, on holy Olivet, the 
Lord finished with glory the career which he 
began in obscurity. He finished his earthly ca- 
reer, but not his human life. His ascension per- 
petuated his incarnation. He did not evacuate his 
human body, but carried it with Him to the right 
hand of God — with its nail prints and its thorn 
scars. Touched with a feeling of our infirmities, 
our great High-priest has passed into the heavens. 
There He ever liveth to make intercession for us. 
With his pierced hands He is able to save to the 
uttermost them that come unto God by Him. He 
is able to lift them up to the place where He reigns. 
This gives place and locality to heaven. Heaven 
is somewhere. It is where the holy feet of Jesus 
stand, and, therefore, where the weary feet of his 
pilgrims may rest. It is where his lips, which 
left the earth pronouncing blessing, still speak, 
and, therefore, where the happy ears of his saints 
may hear his blessed words of love and wisdom ; 
where loving eyes behold Him, the chief glory of 
that glorious place, and the fairest object. 

His own voice, speaking a welcome, will be 
sweeter music than the seraphs' song. What a 
thrill it brings to the soul when one first beholds 
Niagara, or Mont Blanc, or Westminster's towers, 



The Sunday after the Ascension. 93 

or St. Peter's dome ! How the heart quickens 
when the eye first sees some world-famed man — 
Gladstone, or Bismarck, or Tennyson! But to 
think, oh, to think, we shall see Jesus — - his eyes, 
his lips, his hair, his hands ! Even the thought 
throws us upon our knees ; but the reality ! — 
The ascended Lord! The Divine Man! The 
Everlasting Son ! The King in his beauty ! God 
help us all to be faithful. 



WHEN Christ ascended to heaven, there was 
far away from the quiet scene of Olivet — 
far away, and indifferent to Him, a flourishing and 
beautiful city. In the soft air of Italy, on the 
purple waters of the southern sea, Pompeii pur- 
sued her elegant tastes and luxurious pleasures. 
A little later, while St. John was yet living, this 
fair city was caught by Vesuvius, as a beautiful 
butterfly would be caught by a child, and pre- 
served for future times. Pompeii was not destroyed, 
it was preserved. The cloud of penetrating ashes 
hermetically sealed it up, and perpetuated all of 
its glory and all of its shame. So that while Jesus 
is the same in heaven, we have also on earth a city 
which remains as it was while He was praying on 
Olivet. This is wonderful ! Stand here this sum- 



94 The Sunday after the Ascension. 

mer's evening while the sun is going down over 
yon rippling sea. Deathlike silence broods over 
the vacant houses and the empty streets. The 
ruts look as if wheels had yesterday polished 
them ; the pavements as if but yesterday busy feet 
had worn them smooth. Here are mills and 
shops, theatres and temples, schools and homes — 
all vacant, all voiceless. On ruin and wall, and 
silent street, one reads, Vanitas Vanitatum — 
written as if by the hand of God. 

Beyond is the avenger, Vesuvius, lifting his 
haughty head into the blue sky, indifferent to his 
work of ruin, smoking his mighty pipe, and puffing 
the clouds over the lovely valley. 

There is something more startling still. The 
subtile ashes have made a death-cast of all that 
lived in Pompeii in that fatal August of 79. 
Here is the dove upon her nest. Here is the 
house-dog in the attitude of struggle. Here is the 
slave in the agony of death. We see a soldier at 
his post ; a woman who lost her life trying to save 
her jewels ; a mother endeavoring to save her 
children ; and here a beautiful youth and lovely 
maiden kneeling hand in hand, where the grim 
priest, cloud-robed, wedded them forever and forever. 
As we gaze upon these relics of the hoary past, 
how little does it seem to matter, when a new form 
is unearthed, whether it be a slave or a prince, 
a soldier or a lover. The great question is, was 
he a Christian ? 



Whitsun-Day. 95 



tDfyiUxm-'faty. 



rpHE Third Person of the Trinity. A Person, 
-L not a thing; not a function, not an influ- 
ence ; but a Person. He creates ; He gives ; He 
commissions ; He instructs, strives, grieves. Not 
it — He! The Witness, the Comforter, the Sanc- 
tifier. By what touching symbols the Bible de- 
scribes him ! He is as free as water, and as refresh- 
ing. As illuminating as the light. He is as 
searching as fire, and as purifying. As reviving as 
the air. Powerful as the wind, and as mysterious. 
He consecrates like the oil that consecrates a king. 
Like oil he heals. He is as imperceptible as the 
dew, and as fertilizing as the rain. He is as gentle 
as a dove. He warns like a voice. He gives 
security like a seal. Mr. Herbert Spencer may 
not know him, but to the true Christian heart he 
is more real than Mr. Spencer is. He " bears wit- 
ness with our spirit that we are the children of 
God, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." The Holy 
Spirit and Herbert Spencer agree in this : that 
" the natural man receiveth not the things of the 
Spirit of God, for they are foolishness with him, 
neither can he know them." He is as unknowable 
to the carnal eye as light is intangible to the blind 
eye, or music to the deaf ear. But to the new-born 
soul, to the soul that has received wisdom from the 



96 Whitsun-Monday. 

omniscient Spirit and help from the omnipotent 
Spirit, the denials of the blind agnostic excite only 
compassion. Christ sent Him to take his own 
place in this world, and He is as real to the Church 
to-day as the fair form of Jesus was real to the 
multitude upon the mount or to his faithful 
followers on the Sea of Gennesaret. 



r THINK the greatest check upon the abuse of 
the body, upon intemperance, gluttony, or 
licentiousness, is that God-inscribed sentence, 
"Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost." 
Even bad men shrink from sacrilege, from a prof- 
anation of what is holy. The temple consecrated 
to God, set apart by solemn services and devoted 
to sacred purposes, excites emotions of reverence 
in even hardened hearts. Its sacred ornaments 
and holy vessels are protected from harm by their 
consecration. He who robs a church or profanes a 
temple is scorned by even the wicked as a sacri- 
legious monster deserving no pity. All feel the 
impropriety of frivolity in a holy place and the 
brutality of him who disregards the sanctity of 
sorrow or holiness or purity. Desecration of what 
is holy, prostitution of what is noble, are de- 
tested sins. "Your body is the temple of the 



Whit sun-Tuesday. 07 

Holy Ghost." If thou wouldst keep thyself 
pure, inscribe that divine sentence upon thy 
heart. Let it gleam there like God's handwriting 
upon the wall, which, indeed, it is. Let it burn 
like a signal light of danger over every scene of 
riot that would tempt thee. 



f) DD§\tmxv£'XLtffoty. 



TTNDER the power of the Holy Ghost the 
^ Christian conscience has reached, one by 
one, the successive planes of practical charity, 
each higher than the last. Since Jesus illustrated 
with the Good Samaritan that mankind is man's 
neighbor, and the earth is his neighborhood, grad- 
ual upward progress has been made. Since then 
every hospital, every orphan's home, every Mag- 
dalen's house of mercy, every missionary society 
has been wrought into living form by the Chris- 
tian principle of brotherhood. And there are 
planes still to be reached. This principle will 
conquer the world for Christ. Its work may, like 
the coming tide, come with many a receding wave, 
but it will come at last. The last shackle will be 
struck from the last slave. The curse of drunk- 
enness will disappear from human habitations. 
The tyranny of money will be restrained. The 
sufferings of the poor will be alleviated. Heathen 



98 Trinity Sunday. 

idols will be turned to stepping-stones, pagan 
temples to schools. The shrines of superstition 
will be abandoned. Grim-visaged war will smooth 
his wrinkled front ; and a Christian world, united 
by bands of steel and bonds of trade into a common 
neighborhood, and cemented by the Saviour's love 
into a common brotherhood, will hail the white- 
winged Peace ! 



"VTATURE cries out for a Creator; History 
-^ cries out for a Redeemer ; Conscience cries 
out for a Sanctifier. — Thus we have already a 
presentiment of God before we open our Bibles. 
When the Bible reveals the Triune God. Nature, 
History, and Conscience cry in chorus, "All hail! " 
The Bible is full of a Trinity. Through its web 
there ever runs the warp of Unity, into which is 
woven, strand by strand, the blessed Trinity, mak- 
ing more clear the beautiful garment of God. The 
Bible begins with a Trinity : " Let us make man " 
— let us, not let me — "let us make man in our 
image." Make man a trinity ; make him intellec- 
tual, emotional, volitional, three in one. But the 
Trinity means something more than merely three 
aspects of God — as, for example, the three phases 
of the moon. It is rather like the sun, which is 
one ; and the light and color and heat of the sun, 



First Sunday after Trinity. 99 

which are three. The essential elements of Christ's 
manhood dwelt in God long before his incarnation 
by the Virgin ; as the white ray dwelt in the sun 
before it was incarnated upon the cloud through 
the virgin rain-drop's lens. How strange that 
any should attribute this doctrine to Athanasius ! 
Suffering saints sang it in the Gloria in Excelsis 
a hundred years before Athanasius was born: 
"Thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art 
most high in the glory of God the Father." It 
has been sung ever since by Christian men of 
every name. It is interwoven through the ritual 
splendors of Rome and St. Petersburg ; into the 
liturgic beauties of Canterbury ; into the Puritan 
simplicity of Princeton. It has survived ritual 
changes and the shifting modes of thought and 
work, as some great cathedral stands unchanged 
in an ancient town where all else has been swept 
away by successive waves of Avar. 



$\x*t gmxbty affetr trinity. 

TTTHO made God? That is a foolish question. 
^ * Is it more foolish than your question, 
"Who made the world?" Certainly. Why? 
Because we did not ask our question until we first 
proved that the world was made. If you can show 
that God was made, then you may ask who made 



100 First Sunday after Trinity. 

Him. The mind does not demand a cause for 
every existence. It only demands a cause for 
every change. To use the words of science, " We 
can go back to the era when the earth was a whirl- 
ing ball of vapor, or when the sun itself was a 
giant nebula from which as yet no planet had been 
born." Now we have our fair earth with its 
organic life, with its blushing flowers, with its 
eagle's flight, and its William E. Gladstone. Here 
are great changes. Who wrought them? " The 
fortuitous concourse of atoms ? " That sounds very 
fine, but it means simply chance. Could chance, 
with even the help of all geological ages, bring a 
ball of vapor up to this world with its Shakespeare 
and its Jesus Christ? Could atoms blindly drift 
and eddy about into an intelligent and organized 
world? Never. Lord Bacon said that he "would 
rather believe in the fables of the Koran and the 
Talmud than to believe this." Christianity requires 
reasonable,, faith, but atheism requires unbounded 
credulity. Carlyle says of atheism, " One might 
call this the most lamentable of delusions, not for- 
getting witchcraft itself. Witchcraft worshipped 
at least a living devil, but this worships a dead 
iron devil." The fool hath said in his heart, There 
is no God. A man may study "sedentary crusta- 
ceans " for nine years and still be a fool. 



Second Sunday after Trinity. 101 

A NTHROPOMORPHISM ! What a word ! 
It means giving human attributes to God. 
Your over-sensitive infidel makes a great hue and 
cry over this. No doubt it has wrought harm. 
It has made God seem a magnified man, infinitely 
remote from the earth, intermittently revealed by 
some violation of law, intermittently accessible by 
the turn of the ecclesiastical wheel. But the harm 
has been done by thinking that these anthropomor- 
phic descriptions of God were literal. Think of 
them as symbolic, and they are good. They are 
necessary. Whenever a thing gets beyond the 
grasp of our conception, whether it be a heap of 
coin, or geographic extension, or the infinite God, 
then we begin to speak of it in symbols. Much 
religious language and very much Bible language 
is purely symbolic, like the mathematician's equa- 
tions or the astronomer's signs. Yet this symbol- 
ism adequately represents God to us. Because 
we know God better than we can speak of him. 
We know God directly. If we have no innate 
ideas, we have a God-knowing faculty. Cultivated, 
this faculty grows in strength and subtlety. Neg- 
lected, it will weaken and die. It will become 
atrophied by disuse ; and we shall be like the eye- 
less fish of Mammoth Cave, that grope their way 
through the dark waters of their Echo River, while 
the blessed light gladdens the earth with its en- 
swathing kiss. 



102 Third Sunday after Trinity. 

£*Htb ^unba^ after trinity 

T^OES not the intelligent design of the world 
-*- > ^ overwhelm us with the personality and in- 
telligence of what Mr. Herbert Spencer calls "the 
Power which the Universe manifests to us " ? " He 
that made the eye, shall He not see?" The eye 
was made in darkness, yet it was made for the 
light. Was it not made by one who knew the 
light ? Did not He who formed the ear in silence 
know the music and the sound for which the ear 
was made so perfect? If I realize that a knowl- 
edge of music is helping me the more to appreciate 
the works of Wagner, may I not infer that Wagner 
was a musician? If the increase of knowledge 
and science helps a Kepler or a Cuvier to appreciate 
the works of creation, may I not conclude that the 
Creator was a knowing and a thinking God? 
Shall not the Author of thought think ? Shall not 
the Giver of life live ? Is it not certain that in all 
these tilings, the eye, the ear, the brain, the heart, 
the idea precedes the realization ? " In thy book 
were all my members written when as yet there 
was none of them."' But when we speak of design, 
we are confronted with claims of mal-adaptation. 
But these are, no doubt, part of God's great plan. 
They are but the receding waves in the flood tide. 
Is not evolution itself the magnificent movement 
of a mighty drama developing under the hand of 



Fourth Sunday after Trinity. 103 

God? Is not this unceasing, irresistible, upward 
movement the most complete, the most moral, the 
most religious argument from design for the unity, 
the goodness, and the intelligence of God ? 



$omt§ ^unba^ after fcrinify 

/CONVENIENCE is no word for a Christian's 
^-^ mouth. It is a word of suspicious character. 
Convenience kills Christian enthusiasm and chills 
noble impulses. In matters of principle, conven- 
ience has no jurisdiction. In matters of religion 
it should never be consulted. There is no such 
thing as a convenient season for serving God. 
The lover might as well suspend his sighing, and 
wait for the course of true love to run smooth ; 
the politician might as well content himself to wait 
in obscurity until all opposition withdrew ; the 
engineer might as well sit down by his transit, and 
wait for hills to sink and rivers to run dry ; the 
statesman might as well wait for the day when all 
political problems and all social knots untie them- 
selves ; the soldier might as well sheathe his sword 
until all hostile forces ground their arms, as for 
the soul of man to wait for that convenient season 
when the flesh will cease its solicitations, when 
the world will no longer seduce, and when devils 



104 Fifth Sunday after Trinity. 

shall no longer hound the pilgrim's footsteps as he 
treads the narrow way. As long as the soul is in 
the body ; as long as the body inhabits the earth ; 
and as long as the earth is accessible to the powers 
of hell, there will be no convenient season for man 
to break the bands of sin, and embrace the riches 
and secure the happiness which belong to follow- 
ers of the Crucified. God's approval must be 
sought in the face of inconvenience, and won often 
at the cost of great tribulation. 



A GIRL once, sleeping in the open night, 
dreamed that the stars were jewels flashing 
from the angels' crowns. Mars burned from one 
angelic brow like a garnet, and Jupiter blazed from 
another's like a sapphire, and the clusters of Orion 
and Pleiades gleamed from others like the corusca- 
tions of a ro} T al diadem. Thinking herself in 
heaven, she placed her hand upon her brow and 
found a starless crown. "Why," she cried, " does 
no radiant star adorn my crown ? " " Because," 
said one who stood near her, "stars in an angel's 
crown represent souls rescued: you are here through 
God's rnercy, but 3-ou have brought no one with 
you ; therefore your crown is starless." This 



Fifth Sunday after Trinity. 105 

dream puts the most charitable and hopeful face 
upon inactivity. It makes it inherit a crown — 
though that crown was starless. The Bible makes 
inactivity inherit the curse of " wicked and sloth- 
ful servant." There are times in men's lives when 
apathy is positive sin ; when it is selfish to be 
passive, ungenerous to be inactive, soulless to be 
indifferent, and criminal to be neutral. Is idleness 
innocent when in the opening springtime the 
hungry earth is crying to the farmer for Iris seed ? 
Is idleness innocent when in the springtime of 
youth, the seedtime of life, the opening heart, and 
plastic mind, and moulding character are crying to 
parent and teacher, "Now is the accepted time, 
now is the day of salvation" ? Is inactivity ever 
sinless to the soul while earth's probation is the 
seedtime that sows for the harvest of eternity ; 
when life is the spirit's springtime ; when the real 
self is taking its shape and fixing its destiny for 
the great beyond, and when man's activities on 
earth shall reap the summer bloom and autumnal 
fruit of heaven ; and his unfaithfulness shall reap 
the winter's blast of endless want and woe ? 

Is sleep safe while enemies sow tares ? Is apathy 
harmless while thorns are growing? Is indiffer- 
ence innocence when pestilence is sowing its seed, 
or when fate " lets slip the dogs of war " ? Is it 
less criminal while fatal error and blighting sin, 
while wicked men and vicious devils, are sowing 
thorns in the field of God and spreading pestilence 



106 Sixth Sunday after Trinity. 

among the minds of men ; and threatening violence 
to every institution which makes religion safe, 
our country free, our homes happy, and our lives a' 
blessings? 



$\xt§ $unb<xy after trinity 

QOME men are joyful by disposition. We like 
^ the jovial, merry men, the Mark Tapleys of 
the world, who are jolly even under adverse cir- 
cumstances. Yet such joy in an irreligious man 
has something sad about it. It is like building a 
warm and comfortable house upon the winter's ice. 
There are also men who have learned cheerfulness 
because they know the wisdom and health of it. 
We admire this, too — the bravery of being joyful 
in this world. There is something almost tragic 
in the joyous shout of the crew that goes sailing to 
the polar sea. Of course they need all their hope 
and cheer. Soon the sunny air will chill, the 
cheerless ice will fleck the blue sea, the snow will 
hiss in the brine, and the black curtain of the 
Arctic night will fall over the scene. Wave your 
caps, boj-s, as 3-our gallant ship slips out of the 
pier. Be merry if you can. I say to all, I say to 
sinful men even, be cheerful if you can. But I do 
not understand how it is possible to be joyous if 
you look not beyond the grave into which all 
things that give you joy must so soon be swept. 



Seventh Sunday after Trinity. 107 

The joy, the merry laughter of sinful men — is it 
not reckless ? It is like a lot of boys exhilarated 
by the motion of a maelstrom and shouting with 
delight as they are sucked into the fatal vortex. 
How different the Christian's joy ! With God on 
his side, with his books balanced, with his peace 
sealed, with confidence in the eternal future, with 
the mighty conviction that all things work together 
for good to them that love God, — why, such a 
man may indulge all of the exuberance of his 
soul. 



TTTHISKEY ! I see it first in the muck of rot- 
* * ting grain which the still-worm sucks with 
fevered breath from the sour tubs. I see it distilled 
drop by drop, like cold poison from the purple lips 
of a venomed reptile. I see it lie in darkness, 
gathering in its heart the fires of hell, and waiting 
impatient months to kindle the brain of man. I 
see it each black night in those dismal vaults 
gather within it some heart-breaking, home-blight- 
ing power. I see it sparkle in the light at last, like 
the changing flash of a serpent's coils or the eager 
glance of a hungry beast. I see it paint mirages 
of fountains and flowers and joy upon the brain of 
man, while it robs his life of its strength and his 
soul of its sweetness. I see it wring scalding tears 



108 Eighth Sunday after Trinity. 

from gentle eyes, and blanch and stain the cheeks 
of woman. I see it steal the roses from children's 
faces and fill their wondering hearts with sadness. 
I see it cloud noble brains with suspicion and fill 
generous hearts with madness. I see it quench 
the light from happy homes and leave them plunged 
in darkness through weary days of want and fear. 
I see it rob genius of its promise, labor of its re- 
ward, youth of its hope, and age of its repose. 
Language cannot paint the visions of woe which 
this one word waves up with its wand. Anguish 
and tears and disgrace and crime and death in 
myriads of homes and myriads of hearts. If there 
is one word that arouses all the distrust and dread 
and indignation of my nature, that word is 
whiskey ! 



<&\<$t% Ikvx&ty cfittx trinity. 

TTERE is a man like a cloud, and a cloud with- 
-*~^- out any silver lining. He gets between 
you and the sun. He makes everything dark. 
He puts the worst constructions, and attributes 
the worst motives, and takes the darkest view. 
You do not like to meet the murksome man. You 
do not wish to be overcast. Perhaps to-day }*ou 
are hopeful. You have difficulties, but by God*.s 
blessing you can work out. Your church is strug- 
gling, but you think you see a brighter day. You 



Ninth Sunday after Trinity. 109 

have some sorry apples in your basket, but you 
have gotten the big ones on top. You have a 
skeleton or two in your closet, but they are out of 
sight. The sun is shining to-day upon the high 
places and valleys of your landscape. And here 
comes that human cloud, with his shadow creeping 
on before him. You avoid him. You take the 
other side of the street. Because } r ou know in ten 
minutes he would get all the small apples on the 
top of your basket. He would have all the skele- 
tons out of your closet because he likes their com- 
pany. You escape him, because you do not want 
him to cool your iron, for it is hot and you have 
made up your mind to strike it. Such a man may 
be a Christian ; but he has a great besetting sin, 
which he must watch and pray against. Let him 
add this petition to his Litany : From all blue 
devils ; from all dismal dejection ; from all bilious 
despondency ; from all funereal gloom, and from 
all unchristian hopelessness, — good Lord, deliver 
us. 



TTTHAT was the sin of Dives ? It was the sin 
* ' of practical unbelief. The sin of a worldly 
life that practically ignored God. It is the sin of 
the ecclesiastical Dives, the rich parish church, 
dwelling in the comfort and self-satisfied seclusion 



110 Ninth Sunday after Trinity. 

of Congregationalism, clothed in the purple and 
fine linen of gorgeous architecture or art or milli- 
nery, faring sumptuously every day upon rich 
ritual or pulpit elocpuence, and forgetting the 
heathen hordes, or the unreached masses which at 
its very gates cry for the bread of life. 

Dives lifted up his eyes in hell. This vivid, 
pathetic, tragic picture ought to startle us into 
seriousness. It should thrill us with the powers 
of the world to come. It should keep our eyes 
upon eternity. It should help us to look beyond 
mere appearances. It should lift us above envy. 
It should warn us against self-centred aims. It 
should unmask mere conventional humanities. It 
should fill us with hate for the legalized luxury of 
Phariseeism in church and individual. It should 
make us take sides, at whatever cost, against the 
damning sin of selfish inhumanity, with which 
pride and fashion threaten to curse this world and 
make countless thousands mourn. It should in- 
spire us to throw ourselves into the breach, and 
help to fill up the great gulf which yawns between 
men who ought to be united in the bonds of 
Christian fellowship, sympathy, and love. 



Tenth Sunday after Trinity. Ill 



Ztxdfy ^wxCbty (fittx trinity* 

TN the palace at Versailles, as if by the irony of 
-*- fate, is a famous statue of Napoleon in exile. 
His noble brow is lowered in thought, his mouth 
is compressed, his chin is resting upon his breast, 
and his grand eye gazes into space as if fixed on 
some distant scene. There is something inexpress- 
ibly sad in that strong, pale face. It is said that 
the sculptor represented Napoleon at St. Helena, 
just before his death. He is looking back upon 
the field of Waterloo, and thinking how its fatal 
issue was the result of three hours' delay. Those 
three short hours seem ever to write on the walls 
of his memory, — " The summer is ended, the har- 
vest is past ! " Years rolled on, but the memory 
of that neglected opportunity follows the great 
emperor through his life, and haunts him through 
midnight hours in his sea-girt home. I have some- 
times imagined that I could see on some remote 
and lonely shore of the Lake Avernus a soul 
haunted by its memories. The battle of life is 
long past, centuries have rolled away, but memory 
lives. Some lost soul wanders from the rest, where 
the waves of that gulf beat hopelessly on the far- 
off shore. The absent eye, that gazes over the 
starless deep, is looking with longing unutterable 
to the precious time when those who are now in 



112 Eleventh Sunday after Trinity. 

glory held up the blood-stained cross and pointed 
to the joys of heaven, then so near, now so far. 
And a bitter sigh, and a sob as bitter as despairing 
love, fills the solitude; but it reaches no ear, 
touches no sympathy, awakes no echo. Such is 
the vengeance of neglected opportunity. 



<£tom^ ^unba^ affer trinity. 

TTTHEN some years ago the obstructions were 
* * blown out of " Hell-Gate," in New York 
harbor, it was a little child who ignited the gigantic 
charge. Many a night I have seen the waters 
whirl and seethe around those awful rocks that 
peeped like black demons from the foam. What 
fair ships were wrecked there ; what treasures lost ! 
But the days of these demons were numbered. 
Dynamite with its tremendous power was laid in 
the hewn caverns below. All was united to one 
electric key. The hour arrived. Who touched 
the key? Not the scientist's wonder-working 
hand ; not the strong-armed man. The baby fin- 
gers of a little girl were gently laid on that key, 
and the work was done. The black rocks reeled 
back with a groan, and the waters settled down 
again into a smooth, safe channel, through which 
the white ships sail on to the depths and freedom 
and joy of their ocean home. 



Twelfth Sunday after Trinity. 113 

Such an electric key is the name of Jesus in the 
Christian's hand. Temptations may surround us 
upon which have wrecked our purposes and hopes. 
Temptations may confront us upon which thou- 
sands of souls have sunk to ruin. Devils may defy 
us, friends may oppose us, but Christ stands to-day 
the great electric key by which a child may move 
the omnipotent arm of God. That arm thus 
moved will open for us a way, safe and glorious, 
through the dangers of life and darkness of death, 
and the snares of devils, and launch us upon the 
boundless bosom of eternity's ocean and heaven's 
peace. 



1 TOW subtle is slander ! How it begins like a 
-" — *- spark ! How it glows like a cheerful fire ! 
" Only a bit of harmless gossip." How it extends 
like a creeping flame ! How it chars the heart ! 
How it darkens the life like smoke ! 

How terrible is slander ! An untimely word, 
an exaggeration carelessly dropped, like a coal from 
a woodsman's pipe, — how it spreads from tongue 
to tongue, from ear to ear, from house to house, 
with wicked haste ! It hurls down characters as 
the fire fiend fells the trees of the forest. It crashes 
through family peace. It blackens names like the 
blackened walls of a ruin. It creates a poverty 



114 Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity. 

which moth and rust and thieves and fire cannot 
create. There is no insurance. What a great 
matter a little fire kindleth ! A little tattle, and 
friends are alienated ; a little gossip, and a soul 
is embittered ; a little fun, and a good name is 
stabbed. A little spite, and a legion of devils are 
aroused, — devils of suspicion and doubt and hate, 
that can never be allayed. A handful of seed 
sown in the night, and to-morrow the tares and 
the thorns are growing in the Kingdom, to bear 
their perpetual, never-ending harvest of tears and 
blood. 



&§\xtttnt$> gunb&y affer trinity. 

TN church work it is generally the case that 
those who do the least work do the most com- 
plaining. You hear them say, " The church is in a 
bad way, the people are unsocial, the mission work 
is feeble, the singing is not congregational, the 
services are cold, the finances are unsatisfactory." 
Even if these things are true, no church member 
has a right to say so until he has won the right by 
doing everything in his power to remedy them. 
All this reminds me of a little incident of my 
college days. Henry Brown went away, and asked 
Barnwell to take care of some pots of flowers in 
his room. In a few days Barnwell wrote Brown a 
postal card, " Dear Brown, your flowers are all 



Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity. 115 

dying ; I think it is for lack of water." Now, I say, 
if the Church of God needs watering, in the name 
of God, men and women, go and water it. If the 
church is unsocial, do your part to make it social. 
If it needs mission work, stop talking and go to 
work. If the responses are cold, lift your voices 
to make them warm. Join in the singing ; deny 
yourself to swell the finances. Take a hand your- 
self where help is needed. If every faultfinder 
and drone in the Kingdom would say, " This is 
largely my fault," and then arouse himself to build 
before his own door, the scene would remind one 
of the resurrection which Ezekiel saw in the 
vallejr of dry bones. 



$o\ixtwntfy ^unbay after trinity. 

n^HAT which in the darkness seems but one 
-*- talent of silver may in the light prove to 
be a talent of gold. A woman in Lincolnshire 
thought it a small thing that she was teaching a 
dull little boy his figures; but that boy was Isaac 
Newton, and those figures reached the stars. The 
obscure teacher at Eisleben esteemed very lightly, 
no doubt, his school of peasant boys, but among 
them was one who should shake off the shackles of 
Europe. The names of the men are forgotten 



116 Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity. 

who taught Shakespeare to write, who gave Rubin- 
stein his first music lesson, who showed Titian how 
to mix colors, who gave Christopher Wren his first 
lesson in architecture. Those men built wiser 
than they knew who brought John Wesley and 
Francis Xavier and Hugh Latimer to Christ. It 
is thrilling to think of the Sunday-school classes 
where there were boys who answered, when the 
roll was called, to the names of William Muhlen- 
burg, Charles Spurgeon, William Gladstone, Henry 
Liddon, Frederick Farrar, James Garfield, James 
McCosh. 

Schiller, in his Song of the Bell, makes the 
master of the foundry encourage an exhausted 
moulder in the ditch by telling him that the work 
which he is doing in that dark ditch will one day 
speak from the eminence of towers, with tongues 
of eloquence and melody to thronging multitudes. 
Who can tell ? Perhaps the influence of the hum- 
ble home shall one day speak from the eminence 
of a noble life, with the eloquence of a Christian 
character and the melody of a pious spirit. Per- 
haps the lessons of the Sunday-school will speak 
from the pulpit with the eloquence of truth, or 
from the altar with the melody of devotion. Per- 
haps the work of the quiet day school Mill speak 
in senate halls with a statesman's wisdom and a 
patriot's eloquence. Yes, and the work of the 
humble Christian shall be blessed. It may be 
dene in the darkness of obscurity or suffering, but 



Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity. 117 

it -will speak like Schiller's bells from the eminence 
of heaven's towers, sending out their voices of 
praise and music and joy to swell the hallelujah 
chorus of harpers' harps and seraphs' songs. 



ffitttxdfy ^imba^ tftex trinity 

T3 Y the beautiful parable of the Good Samaritan 
- L ^ it was not Christ's purpose to cast any re- 
flection upon the ecclesiastical orders of his day. 
Nor did he intend to approve of the doctrines of 
the Samaritans. But by the heartless neglect of 
men of holy profession on the one hand, and by 
the simple charity of the heretic on the other, he 
desired to exalt the beauty and grace of charity, 
by showing us that its absence robs the holiest 
office of its sanctity, and that its presence covers 
the multitude of sins. Without charity the priest's 
pure robes are slurred with ignominy, and with it 
Jim Bludso's charred and rugged form is glorified 
by a halo of light. The parable of the Good 
Samaritan is intended to rebuke mere theoretical 
religion, which contents itself with paper schemes 
for the reduction of poverty or the relief of dis- 
tress. It rebukes the formalist's religion, which is 
satisfied with the punctilious performance of out- 
side show and ritual observance. It rebukes 
ascetic religion, that one-eyed piety which sees 



118 Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity. 

only God and forgets man. Theories and forms 
are most valuable if they are means to an end. If 
not, they are child's toys in men's hands. The 
value of theories and rituals and forms is as scaf- 
folding upon which to build holy lives and practi- 
cal beneficence. 



fk\%teto\t§ ^xxxCbai tfttx trinity. 

r I ^HE great mass of men believe in papal infalli- 
-*- bility, but they do not place the triple crown 
on the head of Leo XIII. They place it, each one 
on his own head. Of course, there are different 
degrees of loyalty to this infallible I, but few are 
altogether free from it. It is hard for a man to 
dispossess himself of the idea that he is the centre 
of the universe, and that things are far and near 
as they are far and near to him. Thus things are 
important as they are important to him. The far- 
off star seems smaller than the neighboring moon. 
The billions of people in a remote planet are of 
less consequence than the few people in my village. 
The shipwreck of a thousand Chinese is of less 
consequence than a case of diphtheria in my 
family. Thus man considers himself the centre of 
all things, and he measures out from himself. He 
is the starting-point and the standard of measure- 
ment. This natural tendency, if permitted to 
grow, will extend not only to physical, but to 



Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity. 119 

social and moral things. Soon he will measure 
men and creeds and truth, and even God himself, 
by his own stature. Thus men will be good if they 
are good to him. They are wise if they agree 
with him. They are on the right side if they are 
on his side. And even God is near or far, good 
or cruel, as the ways of Providence meet with his 
approval or inclinations. When one has gotten to 
that point, and many have, he has gotten to such 
contraction and narrow-mindedness that, in com- 
parison with it, the most sectarian bigotry would 
be delightful liberality. 



"1 TERE is a large vineyard. Many men and 
-* — *- maidens are busy on the hillside. They 
are coming and going, and singing the vintage 
songs. Here is the master. He sees that the 
rules are kept. There must be no disorder, no 
profanity. Each must keep his place. The bas- 
kets must be clean. The master is counting the 
baskets that are brought to the vats. After each 
name he writes the number of baskets brought. 
At last the week is ended, and the men and 
maidens come to receive their pay. Here among 
them is a man whom the master has been watching 
day by day. He kept his basket clean ; he kept 



120 Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity. 

his place ; he used no profane language ; he en- 
joyed the companionship of the others ; he joined 
merrily in the vintage songs. But in all this time 
he gathered no grapes. 

" What is 3* our name ? " says the master. 

" Menalque," says the man. 

"I find your name upon the book," replies the 
master, "but I do not find that you gathered a 
single cluster ; there is, therefore, no pay for you." 

" No pay? " says the man. " What have I done 
wrong? I have kept my place, used no improper 
language, kept my basket clean, and joined heartily 
in the songs." 

" You did no wrong," says the master, " but you 
did no work. There is nothing for you." 

" No pay for me ! " exclaimed the man. " Why, 
that is the one thing I came in the vineyard for. 
The pay constituted my chief interest in it." 

Is not this the history of thousands in the Lord's 
vineyard ? They come, their names are upon the 
book. They do no special wrong ; they do not swear, 
or steal, or commit adultery. They break no rule. 
They sing the vintage songs. They hear sermons, 
if they are entertaining. They attend church, if 
it is quite convenient. But are they in any true 
sense laborers in God's vineyard ? Have they 
done any honest work for Christ and his church? 
Have they performed one hard task, done one un- 
pleasant duty, spoken one brave word, lifted one 
fallen sinner, lightened one heavy burden, crucified 



Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity. 121 

one loved comfort, or done any one thing or series 
of things that would justly entitle them to the 
name of laborer, or the hope of reward when the 
great day of reckoning comes ? 



r I THE most remarkable figure in human history 
-*- is the Carpenter of Nazareth, standing among 
the shavings of his humble shop, in an isolated 
village, and saying without passion or enthusiasm, 
" Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words 
shall not pass away."' 

With no agencies with which to accomplish his 
designs, he announces that He is a king, and that 
his kingdom shall have no end. This penniless, 
powerless, almost friendless Man declares that this 
kingdom shall be co-extensive with the earth as 
well as with time. His followers shall be, not in- 
dividuals, but nations. " Go ! " He says to men 
equally provincial and obscure and poor. " Go into 
all the world, and make disciples of all nations." 
He admits that his principles will not be popular, 
that his laws shall antagonize what men love, and 
oppose their selfish instincts ; but He calmly fore- 
tells the time when his cause shall triumph, and 
when He, the Nazarene, and the hungry, homeless 



122 Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity. 

peasant, shall become the centre of the world's 
thought, and the object of its affection. 

"We have become so accustomed to all this that 
we forget how wonderful it is. We forget the 
poverty and obscurity of this Carpenter. We forget 
the extent of his conquests and his influence. The 
proud nineteenth century, progressive America 
and rich Europe, must concede that this provincial 
Jew is influencing the world to-day from end to 
end ; and that, with all the world's advancement 
in learning, enlightenment, invention, and sci- 
ence, his name is a living power compared with 
which the names of boasted moderns and the 
names of all earth's great ones are but the favorite 
playthings of an age. Whatever might have been 
the case had we lived in the days of Peter and 
Nicodemus and Caiaphas, we are now no longer 
ashamed to call the Nazarene our King. The car- 
penter's coat can no longer hide his divinity. 



T^REDERICK THE GREAT'S biographer con- 
-*- siders one of his best claims to that title was 
his courage to say in a military despatch, " We have 
lost a great battle, and it is all my fault." It takes 
greatness of mind and nobility of heart to confess 
personal blame for real disaster, when the blame 



Twentieth Sunday after Trinity. 123 

might be thrown on others. It takes a generous 
heart to be a just judge when our own interests 
are at the bar, or to concede the fairness of the 
decision which presses the laurel crown upon 
another's brow instead of mine ; to believe in the 
justice of the world when it fails to appreciate 
what we think ourselves to be, and to approve its 
good sense when we are not taken into the lap of 
its favor. It takes a great mind and a broad mind 
to look first to its own life for the cause of failure, 
before it looks to the fault of others. It takes a 
brave and a wise heart to realize that behind the 
clouds the sun is still shining; that the world 
moves on after age has blinded my eyes so that I 
cannot see its progress ; that God is good in the 
midst of personal disaster, and wise when my fa- 
vorite purposes are thwarted ; and to cry out in 
times of darkness and doubt, " I must decrease ; 
but Christ, and right, and goodness, and justice, 
and love must increase more and more, until the 
perfect day." 



$tetnftt{$ ^unba^ after £rintf^ 

THE universal brotherhood of man is a new 
and original doctrine of Christ. The nearest 
approach to it that I have been able to find in the 
classics is where Plato says, " All of you in the 
state are undoubtedly brethren." But even here 



124 Twentieth Sunday after Trinity. 

he confines the brotherhood to the state. To the 
Greek, outsiders were barbarians. To the Jew, 
outsiders were Gentiles. With Christ there were 
no outsiders. There were no conventional barriers, 
no race obstructions, no color line, no ecclesiastical 
fence, no sectarian hedge, no national wall, no 
ocean's breadth that could confine his love or cir- 
cumscribe his sympathy. Man is my brother. 
What a splendid conception of man ! What a 
blessing to learn this of Christ, and to feel our 
own souls grow and broaden under its influence ! 
How it sweeps the cobwebs from the brain ; how 
it throws open the windows of the heart, letting 
the light in, dispelling the close, foul odors of 
selfishness, frightening the skeletons from narrow 
closets, and illuminating the dark corners of pri- 
vate grief, to feel that 

" A man's a man for a 1 that! " 

How the power and beauty of this Christian hu- 
manity lifts us above and bears us over all distance 
and all time, over continent's stretch and ocean's 
storm, over race prejudice and sectarian bigotry 
and political passion, and social caste and selfish 
love ! 



Twenty-first Sunday after Trinity. 125 



£l»mfy*fiMrf ^vmba^ after £rintf^ 

SOME of our stiff-starched, highly moral infidels 
have made a great discoveiy. They have 
found some unclean animals in the ark. They 
have discovered some goats in the sheep pasture. 
They arch their sanctimonious eyebrows and talk 
about the hypocrites in the church. The truth is, 
there are no greater hypocrites on earth than these 
fellows who think they are so good that they need 
neither God nor Saviour. But what of this dis- 
covery, so startling, so damaging ? What of these 
hypocrites in the church? Is the charge true? 
It is, if the Bible is true. These astounding ex- 
posures of the church's delinquencies, pointed out 
with ill-concealed pleasure by unbelieving Phari- 
sees, were foretold by Jesus, and nailed as a devil's 
trick, more than eighteen centuries ago. The 
parable of the tares is devoted to this very subject. 
When the tares, which at first are beautiful, begin 
to bear fruit, heresy, worldliness, intemperance, 
fraud, right in the heart of the holy church, the 
community is shocked, the tattling wires whisper. 
The very sensation made is a tribute to the church. 
Satan's friends rejoice. The ethical, sesthetical, 
agnostical Pharisee draws his skirts about him. 
The servants of God are made sick at heart. Dis- 
appointed, frightened, mortified, they are driven 



126 Twenty-second Sunday after Trinity. 

to their Master, and cry, " Sir, didst thou not sow 
good seed in thy field ? From whence, then, hath 
it tares ? " Christ says it is the devil. " An 
enemy hath done this." Not God's decree, not 
the church's fault, but the devil. Christ exoner- 
ates his servants and puts this thing where it 
belongs. It is a campaign trick. It is wonderful 
how men have been caught by this shallow device ; 
especially when the trap was so explicitly pointed 
out by our Lord. 

The church is no more unworthy because of its 
hypocrites than money is valueless because of 
counterfeits, than the legal profession is worthless 
because of its pettifoggers, than the medical profes- 
sion is useless because of its quacks, than trade is 
untrustworthy because of its fraudulent bankrupts. 



&)»zntymionb ^unbay after £rinify 

/~^vNE charm of biography is its exhibition of 
^^ great men's inner lives. It shows us the 
human heart behind the scenes of public life and 
genius. This is the charm of the Gospel. This is 
the power of Christianity. We no longer follow 
a metaphysical deity hidden in effulgence. God 
is not presented as a conception, but as a life — a 
life from the womb to the tomb. This life gives 
concrete form to divine attributes. After I have 



Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity. 127 

seen Niagara I have a new thought of grandeur. 
After I know Jesus I have a new thought of good- 
ness and compassion. " The light of the knowl- 
edge of the glory of God is in the face of Jesus 
Christ." Here is the value of the incarnation. 
Here is its necessity. Of course, this coalition of 
deity and humanity is wonderful and inexplicable. 
But it is not more wonderful nor more incredible 
than the mysterious union of soul and body. 
Emmanuel, God with us, is Christ's conquering 
name. It is the man-God that has conquered the 
world, and overcome its doubts and pride and 
swords. It is the God-man that is the central 
truth of the Gospel, and the highest manifestation 
of the love and condescension of God. 



&)ntnty't§\xb ^utrtx^ <*ffe* trinity 

TjTIGH among the Alps, at the foot of the great 
-■ — *~ Rhone glacier, there flows forth a bold 
stream from the moraine of boulders and sand and 
broken ice. This is the beginning of the River 
Rhone. It then looks like a stream of dirty milk. 
I followed this boiling, turbid torrent a hundred 
miles. With frantic fury it plunges along its 
course, bearing its burden of dirt — always discol- 
ored, always vehement, whether thundering over 
the boulders, or crashing down amidst the Alpine 



128 Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity. 

pines, or sweeping through the grassy meadows of 
the high Swiss valley, or hastening past the houses 
of Martigny or St. Maurice. At last a little less 
boisterous, but still impure and discolored, it dis- 
charges itself into Lake Geneva. At the other end 
of this crescent lake the river resumes its career 
to the sea. It is a beautiful lake, indeed, that the 
Rhone has rested in ; so serene, so translucent, so 
deep, so blue ! So picturesque with its vine-clad 
hills, and its nestling villages, and its blue peaks 
and its distant glimpses of the snow crown of 
Mont Blanc ! So historic with its Chillon, and its 
Veve}\ and its Lausanne ! And here is Geneva, 
with its John Calvin's church and its Rousseau's 
island and its bridges. Here the Rhone resumes 
its course to the sea. Let us stand here on this 
bridge, and watch the river flow out of the lake. 
How swift and strong it glides by the stone arches ! 
Still full of spirit and energy and life, but clear as 
crystal. No gritty foam, no grimy impurity, no 
burden of mud and sand. In its rapid and trans- 
parent depths every brown pebble and every white 
shell shines upon the bottom. Beautiful river ! 
pure, unsullied, sparkling, powerful, rejoicing, 
crystalline ! 

Now, then, what Lake Geneva is to the Rhone, 
religion should be to man. Man, with feverish 
heart, with tumultuous thoughts and doubts, with 
terrible temptations, with soiled soul and turbid 
life, with wild upliftings of hope and black chasms 



Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity. 129 

of despair ! Let the Gospel be your Lake Geneva. 
The Gospel with its tranquil depths, with its 
sunny hopes, with its mirrored mountain tops, and 
skies of eternal blue ! Let your turbulent soul 
rest in the Gospel and then go on its strong way 
rejoicing, — its forces not abated, but chastened ; 
no part of your life destroyed, but all of it conse- 
crated, all of it purified, all of it turned into one 
pure, strong stream of manly devotion to truth, 
righteousness, and God. Then will your life be 
like the River Rhone below the lake, where it 
marks a broad belt of fertility, prosperity, and 
peace through the fair fields of France ; until it is 
lost at last in the purple waters of the south, where 
ceaseless summer smiles upon the leaping, laugh- 
ing waves of the jubilant sea. 



£i#enfy*fout#5 ^unba^ after trinity* 

HPHERE are about eight millions of sermons 
preached in the United States every year. 
One would imagine that the whole land would 
bow before such an effort. It reminds me of the 
first battle I ever saw. I was a boy and only a 
spectator. I thought everybody would be killed. 
There were such thousands of guns fired, such 
clouds of smoke and dust, such frightful noise and 



130 Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity. 

yells. But when it was all over only one man was 
dead and a dozen wounded. So on Sunday night, 
when the last reverberation of the pulpit has died 
out, what multitudes remain as they were before. 
Now this is a great evil, this hearing of sermons, 
prayers, and hymns, with unmoved hearts and un- 
moved wills. The services become a mere perform- 
ance, an attraction, an entertainment. The congre- 
gation becomes an audience. The people are critics 
instead of participants. The liar praises a sermon 
on lying ; the slanderer is amused at the good hits 
on slander. A faithful sermon on sin is preached, 
and the sinners go chatting gayly home, discussing 
the preacher's theology, his rhetoric, his delivery ; 
anything but the question, " What must I do to be 
saved? " We have a thousand men interested in 
theology where there is one interested in personal 
religion. Vast numbers discuss theoretical re- 
ligion, many discuss it well. They are walking 
concordances. 

" In religion, 
What damned error, but some sober brow 
Will bless it, and approve it with a text ? " 

Zealous for the progress of some ecclesiastical or- 
ganization, bigoted in some dogmatic system, they 
care little for their own souls and sins, or for the 
nourishment of their own piety. No doubt, it was 
to such as these that the Lord alluded when he 
closed the Sermon upon the Mount. Their mag- 



Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity. 131 

nificent superstructure of ecclesiasticism will be 
found to be built upon the sand, and will fall with 
terrible ruin in that day and hour when real and 
vital religion is needed. 



£tt>enty*ftf^ giux&ty after {trinity. 

"IV /TANY years ago my esteemed friend Col. Boyd 
-^-*-*- of Wytheville, Virginia, gave to a French- 
man, by the name of Hartmann, a rocky hillside. 
Everywhere the hard, blue limestone protruded. 
A more unpromising garden could not be imagined. 
In the spring the warmth and moisture made the 
hillside green for a little while, but the first 
drought scorched it dry and brown. But Hart- 
mann worked away, patiently, perseveringly, syste- 
matically. He dug out the rocks, he deepened 
the soil, he irrigated from the neighboring brook. 
Years passed, and the " Frenchman's Garden," as 
everybody called it, was the most beautiful, the 
most picturesque, the most fruitful, the most 
profitable garden in all of that part of Virginia. 
So, after all, that peculiar kind of human hearts 
which the Lord described as " stony places " are 
not absolutely hopeless. These shallow hearts 
may be deepened. This sentimental religion may 
be enriched. The Word of God may be culti- 



132 St. Andrew's Day. 

vatecl until it grows to be a fruitful plant in even 
these unpromising lives. From being a mere 
enthusiasm, or a dead orthodoxy, religion may 
become a life, a deep-rooted life, a life hid with 
Christ in God. 



$L (Rnbtitf* ®ty. 



A NDREW was a quiet man, overshadowed 
-*--*- by his bold and boisterous brother Simon. 
Yet it was his quiet influence that brought that 
impetuous fisherman to the Lord. His devout life 
found Jesus first. Then he did that quiet and 
beautiful thing of carrying his religion to his own 
home. As soon as he was convinced that Jesus 
was the Messiah, Andrew " findeth his own brother 
Simon." This is all the more beautiful because it 
is so uncommon. How very rare it is that a man 
is a missionary in his own household! Is it be- 
cause the people know him too well ? A man is 
ashamed to preach to those who have seen him 
lose his temper over a badly cooked breakfast. A 
woman hesitates to talk of heaven to those who 
know how devoted she is to earth. Yet St. Andrew, 
with his quiet reality, with his unpretentious gen- 
uineness, went home and carried the good news to 
those nearest and dearest to him. And such was 
his character that they believed him. Simon did 



St. Thomas's Day. 133 

not doubt his brother's judgment. He went with 
him at once to Jesus. The first man ever brought 
to Christ, and Andrew brought him. Immediately 
the more brilliant, the more impetuous, the more 
daring brother goes to the front of the sacred nar- 
rative. A:id Andrew continued his work unher- 
alded and unsung, until on the lonely Euxine 
shores he won the martyr's crown on St. Andrew's 
cross. He was no meteor flashing through the 
historic sky, but a well-trimmed lamp. Who can 
tell, but God, the influence and good, the glory and 
peace, of this faithful, humble life ? 



$t &§om<X8 f 8 ©ay. 



"T^vO not exercise your doubts. Exercise your 
-*-' faith. Doubt is weakness, faith is power; 
doubt is disease, faith is health. Let the sick part 
rest. Exercise the well part, and it will encroach 
more and more until it drives out the sickness. 
Take care of your faith, however small, as the 
famine-stricken guard the scanty seed grain, as the 
snow-bound, lost woodsman nurses his last match. 
Little faith may grow to great faith and become a 
power. " What a great matter a little fire kindleth." 
Do not think about your doubts. Intellectualize 
your faith, exercise it, use your ingenuity upon it, 
see what can be done with it, live up to it, what 



134 St. Stephen's Day. 

there is of it. Yonder at Niagara you see the 
graceful steel bridge span the chasm where the 
untamed whirlpool thunders below. How leapt 
that span from cliff to cliff ? They say a tiny kite 
flew over the chasm and fell upon the other side. 
The chasm was spanned. You say by a thread. 
Yes, by a thread. But the thread was used to pull 
over a cord, and the cord to pull over a rope, and 
the rope a chain, and the chain a cable, and on the 
cable was built the bridge, upon whose strong and 
steadfast span the massive trains crash across. 
Thus may it be with the most attenuated thread 
of faith. What possibilities, what destinies, hang 
upon it ! Ah ! it may be lightly snapped asunder. 
But that thread may grow to a cord, and the cord 
to a rope, and the rope to a cable, and the cable to 
a bridge, spanning the chasm between heaven and 
earth. And our prayers shall ascend, and God's 
blessings shall descend, like the angels ascending 
and descending on the ladder Avhich Jacob saw. 



rpHE first martyr, St. Stephen, being dead, yet 
speaketh. Martyrdom is one of the original 
ideas of Christianity. Martyrdom means that 
Truth is inviolable. Truth must be inviolate if 
we have to die for it. The particular truth for 



St. John the Evangelist's Day. 135 

which St. Stephen died was that God's love is not 
pent up in Jewish rituals and Jewish creeds ; 

" That the love of God is broader 
Than the measure of man's mind ; 
And the heart of the Eternal 
Is most wonderfully kind." 

Those who claimed a monopoly of God's favor be- 
came infuriated that a mere youth should preach 
forcibly, irresistibly, that their boasted monopoly 
was an imposture. So they killed him, — this 
youth, full of faith and of the Holy Ghost. He 
breathed his brave soul out in a prayer to Jesus. 
Ah, here was a fragrant, holy life, rebuking with 
its earnest spirit the careless and the aimless ; re- 
buking with its brief career those who excuse their 
fruitless life by lack of time ; rebuking with its 
humble station those- who excuse their idleness by 
want of influence. Look you upon this picture, 
this mere deacon, this martyred youth, with his 
angel's face glowing in the focus of God's smile, 
standing out effulgent against the shadowed back- 
ground of hate. 



~\ \TEARY years after the other apostles had 
' ' died, years after Jerusalem had fallen, 
thirty years after St. Peter and St. Paul had suf- 
fered martyrdom, sixty years — which is a long, 



136 St. John the Evangelist's Day. 

long time — after the crucifixion, St. John the 
Divine still lived. He was a very, very aged man. 
Yet his unfailing faculties were to the last the 
chosen channels of Revelation. What a retrospect 
had been his ! What religious and civil revolu- 
tions had swept the earth in his time! What 
strong men had he seen bowed down! What 
sowers to the flesh had he seen reap corruption ! 
What proud hearts had he seen humbled! Oh, 
the fair forms and the beautiful faces ! — he had 
seen them wither. How had he seen the mighty 
fallen! Eleven Roman emperors had risen from 
the horizon of obscurity, had blazed in their merid- 
ian splendor. St. John had seen them sink, one 
after another, quenched in a sea of blood. Won- 
derful had been his worldly experience ; but more 
wonderful his heavenly vision. All earthly things 
were like the fragments of sea-weeds and the 
broken spars of noble ships and the brave men's 
bleaching bones that lay scattered along Patmos's 
storm-beat strand ; and spiritual things were like 
the calm heavens above and the stars that roll for- 
ever on — so great, so high, so unmoved by earth's 
far-off storms and petty strifes, that seem so great 
to us. 



Conversion of St. Paul. 137 



Convmion of fit Qftaul. 

HHHERE is one figure in history wliich all criti- 
cism cannot efface ; it is Paul at Damascus. 
I have often thought of those three days and 
nights, through whose weary, silent hours he sat 
sightless, foodless, motionless, in that house in 
the street called "Straight." What a time for 
reflection ! What a time to detect imposture, 
if there should be any ! What a time to 
dispel illusions ! What a time, too, to review 
the recent scenes at Jerusalem ! Paul was well 
equipped for this investigation. He was an eye- 
witness. He knew the men who had crucified 
Jesus. He had talked with the men who claimed 
to have seen him arisen. He was thoroughly famil- 
iar with the case. He had, moreover, a well- 
trained mind — logical, clear, and pains-taking. 
He was not willing to give up without a terrible 
struggle. The old faith died hard. The new 
faith antagonized all his instincts and interests. 
It was an obscure and despised religion. Paul 
was not dazzled by the glamour of a victorious 
Church. His pride was at stake. He had been 
aggressive in his opposition to that which he was 
now called upon to espouse. He must resign 
country, social position, and friends. The Lord 
promised him this : " I will show him how great 



138 The Purification. 

things he must suffer for my name's sake." In 
undisturbed silence he went over the evidence and 
came to his conclusion. After three days and 
nights he came out from the purgatorial fires of 
suspense and conflict. He came with a decision 
with which he was willing to face any criticism ; 
for winch he was willing to endure any hardship, 
live any life, and die any death. How irresistible 
is such a decision, from such a man, and under 
such circumstances ! 



G>$t (purification* 

"YTTHAT a scene for painters, what a theme for 
poets, what a text for preachers, is the 
Purification of the Virgin! There is the aged 
Simeon, who, like the old covenant, could not °die 
till he had seen the Lord ; singing his Nunc Di- 
mittis, that dying-swan note of Old Testament 
psalmody. There was the holy Anna, a widow 
indeed, the first of that countless throng of faith- 
ful women who should proclaim the Christ. There 
was the blessed Mary, who came in her pious pov- 
erty to offer her cloves in the temple, and in reality 
offered the Lamb of God. There was the Holy 
Child, a helpless babe, symbol of the coming 
"New," as Simeon and Anna were types of the 
going -Old." Rubens and Guido Reni, Paul 



St. Matthias's Day. 139 

Veronese and Titian, Raphael and Rembrandt, 
have drawn inspiration from these holy scenes and 
left in living colors their thoughts about them. 
May they also inspire us to living deeds ! May 
the Holy Spirit lead us to the Temple of God ; 
may we meet the Lord there. May it be our day 
of purification. May we all at last with Simeon 
sing, " Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart 
in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." 



r~PHE most that we know of this apostle is that 
he took the place of one who failed in life's 
mission. Matthias was the successor of Judas. 
Man is honored — Paul and Judas, you and I, are 
honored with a place in the great plan of God. 
If we are faithful, our names are wrought into the 
eternal fabric. If we are faithless, God does his 
work with other agents. He can raise up the 
stones into Abraham's seed. He can make the 
stones cry out, if men are dumb. The work goes 
on ; it does not cease when our connection with it 
ceases. Other names take the place on the roll of 
God's co-workers where our names were blotted 
out. He calls us to labor in the vineyard, not 
because he needs workers, but because we need 
work. Ourselves are the greatest losers by our 
failure, the greatest gainers by our fidelity. 



140 The Annunciation. 



&§t (ftnnunciafton. 

TT7~HILE Gabriel winged his strong flight from 
heaven to earth, many a Jewish woman's 
heart fluttered with the hope that the Messiah 
would be born of her. Many a proud mansion would 
have welcomed Heaven's herald then. There were 
gorgeous palaces in the world, in those days, that 
could have received even an angel with sumptuous 
honors. There was the magnificence of Herod the 
Great, and the splendor of Augustus. But " God 
hath chosen the weak things of the world to con- 
found the things that are mighty." Past Rome's 
grandeur and Jerusalem's pride, the angel swept 
on to the nestling mountain hamlet, to the humble 
home, to the blessed Virgin, and there announced 
God's gift to Mary, to Israel, and to mankind. 
With all the help of beautiful legends and the in- 
spiration of Italy's art we still fall short in fancy 
of the greatness and beauty of this scene — this 
angel's visit to this handmaid of the Lord, Heaven's 
chosen instrument of the Holy Ghost. 

I think all Christians may join in the angel's 
salutation, and heartily say at least this much of 
the Ave Maria, — " Hail, Mary, full of grace, the 
Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among 
women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb ! " 



St. Mark's Day. 141 



"TT is an interesting thing to watch an ocean ship 
get out from London docks. How helpless 
she is ! She cannot use her machinery. Her sails 
are furled. She is pushed forward and backward. 
She is pulled along by puffing tugs. She stops to 
let other vessels pass. She waits through weary 
hours. She moves on again. But she is hindered 
and limited and retarded. But some progress is 
rewarding her perseverance. She is getting more 
room. She begins to ply her engines. But she 
must go slowly. She must be cautious. Then there 
is more liberty ; there are fewer obstructions and 
fewer conditions. The river is wider. The city 
is being left behind, with its din and its sin. The 
fresh air revives the sailor. He unfurls his can- 
vas. He moves steadily on to the line where river 
fades into sea. He hears the music of the surf 
beating upon the sand. He sees the white-caps 
marching across the blue prairies of ocean. And 
at last the gallant ship, emancipated, seems to 
stretch herself, and expand herself, and swell and 
sway and bow in ecstasy, as she speeds her way 
over the billowy fields of her native heath and 
boundless home. Thus it is with the soul that is 
escaping from the trammels of the flesh, and the 
limitations and the conditions imposed upon it by 



142 Sts. Philip and James's Day. 

the world. How slow its progress is at first! How 
it is pushed forward and falls backward ! How 
crippled is the soul's splendid machinery ! how 
awkward its movements ! Its sails are furled. It 
must submit to be helped by things smaller than 
itself — by trivial rules and puerile helps. It 
stops. It waits. It stands to for obstructions. 
But it moves on. It makes a little progress. The 
channel is getting wider. The shores of earth are 
getting further away. There is more room, more 
freedom. The engines move. The sails are 
thrown out. The fresh air of grace gladdens the 
sailor, and tells him that the city of sin is fading 
in the distance. The ocean of liberty is reached at 
last. The Lord takes the helm. The Spirit of 
God fills the sails, and then, emancipated and free, 
unloosed from the devil's imprisonment, unshackled 
from the habits and slavery of flesh, unlimited and 
unconditioned by the world's conventionalities, the 
glad soul rejoices on the bosom of God, which is 
the soul's ocean, which is the soul's home. 



TF a man has sinned, he has sinned. It is done. 
And nothing can make the fact not a fact. 
The sin has been committed. It has gone upon 
record. It has become forever a part of the man's 
history. It is woven into the very warp of his 



Sts. Philip and James's Day. 143 

past. The materialist's mud can hide it only for a 
time. The flowers of the infidel's rhetoric can 
cover it but for the moment. Beneath flowers and 
mud, the sin is still engraved on the very adamant 
of fact. Macbeth may incarnadine the multitudi- 
nous seas, his royal spouse may use all the per- 
fumes of Arabia ; but the fact remains indelible, 
imperishable. The promise of future good behav- 
ior may bless the future, but it cannot make the 
past not to have been. Recent discoveries have 
revealed the carcasses of prehistoric animals 
thrown out at the foot of a Siberian glacier. 
These animals were preserved unchanged, unseen, 
and unknown, for untold centuries, beneath the 
frozen mud and the solid ice of the never-hasting, 
never-resting, ever-moving glacier. And when, 
at last, these long-preserved carcasses came out to 
the light and warmth and sun, they sent forth their 
horrid stench. Thus sin may be buried under the 
mud of materialism, and be frozen in indifference 
and hidden in oblivion for years and centuries and 
cycles, but the on-moving glacier of time will at 
last reveal them to the light and glory of the 
Judgment Day, and then will they stink in the 
nostrils of God, and of angels, and of all the assem- 
bled multitudes. 



144 St. Barnabas' s Day. 



fit (g&tnafas's £><*£♦ 

r HAVE no doubt that Barnabas stood very 
high— even among the very highest of those 

men who won the world for Christ in the apostolic 
times. As a living power, as an active factor, he 
is much more prominent than most of the apostles, 
and is inferior only to St. Peter and St. Paul! 
The very title that the disciples gave him, " Bar- 
nabas," or " Son of Consolation," shows what he 
was to them. With a personal presence which 
made the Greeks at Lystra take him for Jupiter, 
with a liberality which laid his fortune at the 
apostles' feet, with the scriptural knowledge which 
belongs to a Levite, with broad sympathies and 
fervid eloquence, he must, indeed, have been a 
great consolation to that feeble and struggling band, 
which had just faced the appalling task of evan- 
gelizing a world. Even after eighteen centuries of 
work, after so much has been done, we feel that it 
would still be a great consolation if young men of 
wealth and beauty and learning and eloquence 
would give themselves, as Barnabas did, to the 
ministry of Christ, and the promotion of that one 
cause which is most worthy of noble gifts and 
exalted talents. 



The Nativity of St. John the Baptist. 145 



tfyt (Ttaftiri^ of fkt 3o§n t$t (g<xyt\*t 

"TTTE have seen on some beautiful morning the 
^ ' sun rising in glory out of the east, and the 
moon still fair and bright in the west. This is 
what I think of when I think of Jesus and St. 
John the Baptist. The rising sun, the setting 
moon. One increaseth, the other decreaseth. 
Not because they antagonize each other, but be- 
cause the inferior fades before the superior splen- 
dor. One closes the dispensation to which it be- 
longs — the night. The other opens the dispensa- 
tion which belongs to it — the day. One has the 
beauty of a recluse ; the other comes to mingle with 
the activities and sorrows and joys of men. One 
gives borrowed light ; the other is light in its 
essence. One gives light that is transient; the 
other stores light and heat in everything that it 
touches. The one is negative — preaching repent- 
ance ; the other is constructive and productive — 
founding a kingdom. 

John the Baptist, as we look back at him, seems 
greater than any other prophetic star that shines 
in the welkin of the Jewish Church. Not that he 
is really greater by material measurement; but 
because he reflects more than any other prophet 
the glory of the Sun of Righteousness. 



146 St. Peter's Day. 



$1 {ptttt'0 ©a^ 



TTTHAT very human stuff the apostles were 
* ' made of ! Take Simon Peter, for instance. 
It is very instructive, almost amusing, to think 
that a great ecclesiastic should have been made 
out of him. A young fisherman, with a powerful 
physique, a brawny arm, an impetuous temper, 
a generous heart, a vigorous mind, an elementary 
education, a good trade, an humble home, and a 
young wife. That was the raw material of him ! 
Would it not be well if people bore in mind the 
raw material of the clergy? A gentleman com- 
plaining of the clergy received the apology that 
they were made out of the laity. Ministers may 
say, with Shy lock : " Have we not eyes ? Have we 
not hands, organs, dimensions, passions ? Fed by 
the same food, hurt by the same weapons, subject 
to the same diseases, healed by the same means, 
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer 
that you are ? If you prick us will we not bleed ? 
If you tickle us will we not laugh ? If you poison 
us will we not die ? " If this were remembered, 
perhaps ministers would frequently get forbearance 
instead of criticism, prayers instead of blame, sym- 
pathy instead of prejudice, and help instead of hurt 
feelings and injured innocence. 



The Apostle St. James's Day. 14' 



rpHE headless body of St. James lay upon the 
bloody sand. Thus drank this "son of 
thunder" of the cup that his Lord had drunk 
before ; thus was he baptized with his Master's 
baptism. And Herod, his murderer, looked with 
satisfied pride and brutal scorn upon the mangled 
corpse. And Herod, arrayed in a robe of shim- 
mering gold, was hailed as a god. Here are 
apparent success and failure side by side. Wher- 
upon I will take up my parable : 

One hot August morning in 1884, I stood and 
gazed at the graceful form of Vesuvius as it lifted 
its proud head into the blue sky. I traversed the 
city and began the circuitous ascent. And at last, 
after hours of weary toil, I reached the top. I 
stood upon the rough, ashy rim of the crater. 
Around me is a circle of cinders and stones and 
sulphur. Below me is a lake burning with fire 
and brimstone — a turbulent lake, angry and fu- 
rious, sinking and swelling, hissing and boiling 
and seething ; receding to awful depths and rising 
almost to my feet ! Blue blazes creep over the 
surface like serpents, and red flames leap up from 
the abyss. White jets of steam hiss high in air, 
and black clouds of smoke roll over the valley. 
The noise grows louder, the heat more intense, 



148 The Apostle St. James's Day. 

the stench more unendurable, and at last an explo- 
sion of fearful force throws me almost from my 
feet, and I turn and flee in terror. And as I flee 
down the ashy cone I see the valley which I have 
left that morning. I see the winding road playing 
hide and seek among the olives and the vines. 
I see the white villas, more and more numerous till 
the city is reached. I see Naples like a crescent 
encircling the sea. Its domes and spires gleam in 
the light. I see the beautiful bay with its dotted 
sails of many .a hue. I see the blue mountains in 
the distance. I see the broad Mediterranean, with 
its isles. In that atmosphere the horizon is clearly 
lined. No veil of mist intercepts the gladdened 
gaze while the Italian sky bends down to kiss the 
dimpled sea. 

All of this I left behind as I climbed the rugged 
heights to a lake of fire. So had Herod, and so 
has many a man, when he thought he had reached 
the summit of human glory, reached the brink of 
hell. And as he turns in terror from the unveiled 
fury, he sees — alas, too late ! — what he has left be- 
hind him. He has been climbing away with weary 
steps from Paradise — away from the city that 
hath foundations, away from the sea of glass, which 
the prophet saw in heaven as the symbol of eternal 
peace. 



The Transfiguration. 149 



&& &x<xn*fxc$ux<xt\on. 

f\N Hermon's heaven-kissing summit, encircled 
^S by gleaming snow, under stars that burned 
bright through the high crystal air, had climbed 
a little company of men. Jesus and Peter and 
James and John. Jesus and the three disciples 
who had seen Jairus's daughter raised, the same 
three who should see Gethsemane's bloody sweat. 
Jesus prayed, and as he prayed, the veil of human 
flesh could no longer conceal his inner radiance. 
A halo of glory enveloped Him, and his person 
shone with an effulgence that put to shame the 
pearly snows of Hermon. And his celestial splen- 
dor drew the very spirits from their concealment, 
and gave them palpable form. Mones, the greatest 
man who had yet walked the earth, and Elijah, the 
greatest prophet, stood before the carnal eyes of 
mortal men. They talked with Jesus on the high- 
est theme that thought can touch — his death. 
And here, on this mountain top, away from human 
strife and joy, while the busy world was hushed 
in sleep, chosen men were made the eye-witnesses 
of the majesty of Christ. And here was manifested 
with startling realism the communion of saints in 
heaven and earth; the union of the church mili- 
tant and the church triumphant ; the continuous 
life of the old covenant with the new; the recog- 



150 St. Bartholomew's Day. 

nition of departed saints ; and the Kingship of 
Christ over both the quick and dead. How 
calm was the carpenter's Son amidst these super- 
natural scenes which overwhelmed with wonder 
and fear the other men ! Yet the frightened 
Simon felt that he would perpetuate this splendor 
and detain this holy compan}^. But that could 
not be yet. It must be reached by cross-bearing 
for Simon and for Jesus too. And the memory of 
this scene would sustain them all. It would 
strengthen Jesus in Gethsemane and on Calvary. 
It would sustain these disciples through their 
faithful lives and martyr's death. 



TTTE know next to nothing about this man 
* * Bartholomew. He was no genius ; he made 
no stir. He did not come to prominence either as 
a Simon Peter or a Judas Iscariot. He was one 
of the obscure, unknown Christians. Yet these 
men make up the army of God. It is the aggre- 
gate of small things that make life. It is the 
stream of pennies that fill the treasury of God. 
The numberless leaves make the forest ; the in- 
numerable sands bound the sea. Not brilliant 
efforts, but repeated efforts, carry on the world's 
progress. Thread by thread the cloth is woven ; 



St. Matthew's Day. 151 

rail by rail the bands of steel encircle the earth ; 
brick by brick the city is built. The one-talented 
men, like Bartholomew, make the world and the 
church. The important people are the privates 
rather than the generals, the machinists rather 
than the mechanics, the ploughmen rather than the 
agriculturists, the pioneers rather than the emigrant 
agents, the loomsmen rather than the overseers, 
the faithful men of mediocrity rather than the 
brilliant men of genius. 



$t (tttatf^to'* ©at;. 

OT. MATTHEW, the publican, the business 
^ man, the householder, was called away from 
the receipt of custom to serve Christ. He was 
well-to-do, but served God. One of the greatest 
and perhaps the latest triumphs of Christianity 
will be the consecration of wealth and the power 
of wealth. Riches are intrinsically noble ; they 
have power to create much noble beauty and joy. 
But they have been in the hands of the devil. 
They have been used to debase and harden and 
corrupt men. They have made men forget God. 
Trusting in riches and love of money has imper- 
illed millions of souls. Many a man has lost his 
innocence through haste to be rich. Heaping up 
money has debased many a character. How great 



152 St. Michael's and All Angels' Day. 

then, because how rare, to wrest the power from 
evil, to make money a blessing, to use it as a 
stewardship from God, and to bestow it liberally 
as gifts, instead of having it wrung from us as 
spoils. 



$t. (midM'0 anb (Alt (&n$tW ®a^ 

A NGELS' visits, few and far between, are 
-^*- always ushered in with suitable conditions. 
No common scenes invite them, no trivial matter 
brings them. The scenes around them are so ap- 
propriate, so in unison with angelic appearances, 
that the angels seem as natural as the golden rim 
of a summer cloud. There is nothing strained in 
their introduction, nothing abrupt in their coming. 
How naturally Lot's celestial visitors enter into 
the tragedy of burning Sodom ! How much in 
keeping with the patriarchal life of the broad free 
desert are the angelic forms that adorn the story 
of Abraham and Hagar and Jacob and Moses! 
They are as natural as flowers blushing in the 
desert air. How inseparable they seem from the 
stirring history of David and Daniel ! And in the 
New Testament it is only the greatest events that 
bring them out for a moment, like the invisible 
electricity that flashes an instant into the summer 
lightning, and sinks back into the invisible again. 
We see them like the aurora shining upon the 



St. Luke's Day. 153 

shepherds. We see them with Zacharias and Mary. 
Then years pass before their burning zeal glows 
into visible form again. Then we see them upon 
the Mount of Transfiguration, in the gloom of 
Gethsemane, sitting on the broken tomb of the 
resurrection, pointing to the cloud of the ascension 
as it fades into the blue of heaven. That they are 
now invisible is no evidence that they are far away. 
All the greatest powers are invisible ; subtile life, 
the enswathing air, the intangible electricity, the 
diligent steam, mysterious gravitation, all are in- 
visible as the angels. 



§ht &uW* ©££♦ 



ST. LUKE, the beloved physician, the refined 
scholar, the painter of two galleries of sacred 
portraits — the Gospel and the Acts — was St. Paul's 
friend, his co-worker, his fellow-traveller, the sharer 
of his trials and his memories — St. Luke, the true 
friend. Before he was born, Cicero had written, 
"Friendship doubles our joys and divides our 
griefs." Most of that which goes by the name of 
friendship is as rootless as an aquatic plant, that 
turns its broad leaves and flowers to the summer's 
sun. Men desecrate the holy name of friendship 
by applying it to alliances, conferences, and leagues. 
But true friendship is one of the sweetest and best 



154 Sts. Simon and Jude's Day. 

of earthly things ; if, indeed, it can be called 
earthly. Friendship is the best developed fruit of 
love. It is the escape for the pent-up soul. 
Friends can do for each other what modesty for- 
bids them to do for themselves. They can keep 
down each other's vanity, and keep up each other's 
courage. Friendship has the physician's skill, the 
nurse's vigilance, the mother's devotion. How 
may we procure this blessed boon ? Friendship 
cannot be created by the jugglery of oaths and 
grasped hands. True friendship ought to be 
grounded in the love of God ; it ought to be well 
chosen, cemented by nature and religion, devel- 
oped by time, tested by adversity, consecrated by 
associations. Let such friendship be held at high 
value. Let no trivial thing imperil it. Let it be 
cherished by confidence unstinted, by demonstra- 
tions of affection, by sincerity and truth, by faith 
and trust, by mutual forbearance and sacrifice. 
Such friendship will be an oasis in the arid waste 
of selfishness ; and it will be an anticipation for 
the life to come. 



^te. ^imon anb June's ©a^. 

TTTHILE the evening hour is the holiest and 
* * the most solemn of the day, it is also often 
the saddest. At eventide the day is done; the 
books are closed; the hammer reclines on the 
anvil ; the plough lies in the furrow ; the sun is 



AU Saints' Day. 155 

burning low in its socket ; the shadows are long 
and ghost-like and weird; the warmth has died 
out of the air; the world is silent. To many a 
man — aye, and woman — this is a lonely hour. 
Separated from loved ones, welcomed by no eye, 
cheered by no presence, the dying embers on the 
hearth wave up the visions of the past, of happier 
days and absent forms. Sitting in the unlit gloom, 
the aching heart feels tears arise from it to gather 
in the eyes. It is then the devout soul draws 
near to Him who trod the wine-press alone. It is 
then he feels the deepest personal love for our 
dear Lord. It is then he most needs his sympathy. 
It is then he is most dependent on his companion- 
ship and communion. It is then he is most grate- 
ful for his promise, " I will never leave thee nor 
forsake thee." 



(&U $<x\nt8> ®cy. 



TN the wonderful cemetery of Pere-la-Chaise in 
Paris, are many interesting tombs, — the 
tombs of Abelard and Heloise, of Moliere and 
Racine, of Madame Rachel and Talma, of Balzac 
and Thiers, and the grassy grave of Marshal Ney. 
There is also a tomb to the unknown dead, the 
untombed dead. Upon this monument are hung 
the garlands of those who have died, whose graves 
they do not know or cannot reach. And this 



156 Ember Days. 

tomb is always covered with fresh flowers or im- 
mortelles. 

Now I have thought that among the festivals of 
the Church this All Saints' Day is our monument 
to the unheralded dead. We have St. Peter's Day 
and St. John's Day and the others. But here is 
All Saints' Day. How many saints there have 
been, some known to us, who have never been 
nor ever will be heralded as the great of earth ! 
Unhonored and unsung, their good deeds were 
interred with their bones. Stimulated by no 
applause and sustained by no hope of fame, the}' 
were patient in tribulation and faithful unto death. 
No marble marks the spot where their ashes rest. 
But this festival is their monument, and the 
pra}-ers and praises which are offered on it are 
their wreaths. These lives and deaths are dear to 
God ; and we thank Him for the good examples 
of all his saints, who, having finished their course 
in faith, do now rest from their labors. 



SOME men have disbelieved Christianity because 
it makes the infinite God condescend to the 
trifles of earth. Would we discredit a biography 
because it described the mailed hand of a warrior 
rocking the cradle of a sleeping infant, or if it told 



Ember Days. 157 

of a keen critic listening with real pleasure to the 
broken babble of a child, or of a king who smiled 
at war and yet stoops to pick up his prattling tot ? 
The king is more kingly, the critic and warrior 
honor themselves, by showing the paternal instinct 
for the tender and weak. I have seen an iron ball 
weighing a ton let fall a great distance upon an 
iron safe and crush it to pieces. But that ball was 
incapable of gentleness. Much more interesting 
and intelligent is the great steam-hammer that can 
strike hard enough to crush the iron safe, and can 
strike gently enough to drive a pin without bend- 
ing it. So the blind force of blind fate, while 
terrible to think about, is not so great a conception 
as the Almighty God, who is at the same time the 
Almighty Father ; great in the storm's blast, and 
gentle in the snownake's fall ; engineering the fields 
of heaven, staking off the stars, building the spires 
of grass, and coloring the forget-me-not. God is 
great enough to have complete control of his own 
greatness. God is great enough to move the 
whole of his infinite love down to the delicate point 
of sympathy that touches the heart-ache of an 
orphan child. 



158 Rogation Days. 

(Rotation ©a^s. 

f"^\ OD always works by agents, and sends his 
^-^ gifts through appointed channels. By law 
He makes the seeds to grow, and worlds to wax 
and wane. The lightnings are his agents, the 
clouds are his channels, the fields are the tables 
from which He feeds the world. So in the universe 
of grace God works by means. By meditation 
the thoughts are winged from earth to heaven. 
By prayer the soul goes thither with the thoughts. 
By the Scriptures the heart is made wise. By 
self-examination the right road is kept, and the 
distance is marked. By charity life is imparted to 
dead faith. By the Holy Communion we feed on 
heavenly food, and hold high concourse with 
angels and archangels, and all the company of 
heaven. All means of grace are God-given, and 
all must be used. We have no right to be capri- 
cious, like children who would make a meal on 
sweets if we would let them. . Means of grace 
must be used in due proportion. One may medi- 
tate too much. One may pray ineffectively. 
Prayer will be imperfect if unmixed with other 
means of grace. Without the Scriptures it will 
lack faith and fervor. Without self-examination 
it will lack aim. Without meditation it will be 
shallow. Without public worship it will be selfish. 
Without the Holy Communion its very life will 
be imperilled. 



Thanksgiving Day. 159 



£#anib$ii?in$ ©<*£♦ 



TT is wonderful how we forget our blessings, for 
-L the simple cause that they are so constantly 
supplied, so abundantly given. They are common. 
Who thinks of being thankful for sunlight — sun- 
light so simple, so common, so universal? Go 
into Mammoth Cave and spend two or three days. 
It is beautiful and strange. As the chemical lights 
flare up at Grand Dome, or Gothic Chapel, or the 
Star Chamber, or Echo River, we exclaim, How 
beautiful, how weird, how sublime ! But when 
the visit is over, and you come to the cavern's 
mouth, you are captivated by the sunlight and the 
colors of the world that shine and shimmer with- 
out — so brilliant, so dazzling, so gorgeous, so glo- 
rious ! Bless God for the sunlight, and the green 
grass, and the sailing clouds, and the blue sky, so 
abundant, yet so good and so beautiful. Let us 
not fail to be mindful of blessings because they are 
sent to us with regularity and lavished upon us in 
bounty. 



INDEX. 



A scene with lessons, 138. 
Almighty gentleness, 156. 
An evidence of Christianity, 137. 
Angels, 71, 152. 
Ascension, 92, 93. 
Assimilated religion, 22. 
Atheism, 40, 53, 99. 
Atonement, 78. 
Averages, 25, 47. 

Bible, 10, 127. 
Brotherhood, 97, 109, 123. 
Building, 34, 49. 

Catholicity, 123. 
Character-building, 49. 
Charity, 117. 
Childhood, 14, 15, 16. 
Christ and His Prophet, 145. 
Christ distorted, 39. 
Christ's Divinity, 84, 121. 
Christ's Humanity, 16, 126. 
Christ, Souship of, 81. 
Christianity and children, 15. 
Christianity, if not what, 40. 
Christianity is unselfishness, 19. 
Christless world, 74. 
Church, our mother, 73. 
Communion of saints, 149. 
Conscience, 13. 

Conserving power of the Gospel, 127. 
Convenient season, 103. 
Creation and redemption, 86, 98. 
Criminal inactivity, 104. 
Critics, 53, 114. 
Croakers, 108. 

Daily bread, 62. 

Daily growth, 51. 

Damnation, 23, 30. 

Day of small things, 115. 

Death and dying, 90. 

Death-bed repentance, 52. 

Deception of praise, 41. 

Deliver us from evil, 05. 

De profundis, 66. 

Dignity of possibilities, 115. 

Dives, Ecclesiastical, 109. 

Divinity of Christ, 84, 121. 

Doubt, 133. 

Dream of a Christless world, 74. 



Editor of the Bible, 10. 
End of the year, 17. 
Evening shadows, 154. 
Evidence, 121, 137. 
Excessive foundations, 54. 

Fasting, 31. 
Field for talents, 144. 
Flowers for the living, 18. 
Forbidden fruit sweet, 32. 
Forgiveness, 63. 
Forms, 117. 
Friendship, 88, 144, 153. 

Gifted youth, 144. 

Giving, 55. 

Gloom unchristian, 108, 

God, 98, 99, 101, 102. 

God knowable, 101. 

God not an object of charity, 55. 

God personal, 102. 

Good Samaritan, 97, 117. 

(ireatness of soul, 122. 

Growth, 51. 

Hallowed be thy name, 59. 

Handmaid of the Lord, 140. 

Happiness, 24. 

Headstone of the corner, 75. 

Heaven, a negative aspect, 80. 

Heaven, realizing, 45, 80. 

Hell, 23, 30. 

Holy Communion, 77. 

Holy Spirit, 95, 96, 97. 

Holy Trinity, 98. 

Hope, 21,26. 

Humanity of Christ, 126. 

Hunger, 42. 

Hypocrites, 125. 

Immortality of sin, 142. 
Incarnation, 14. 
Infallibility, 118. 
Inspiration, 10. 
Intuition, 44. 

Judgment, 9. 

Keystone, 75. 

Lend us not into temptation, 64. 



162 



Index. 



Libertv, 36, 56. 
Life struggle, 85. 
Lord's Praver, 58-65. 
Lost bv hope, 26. 
Lost, The, 27. 
Love, 37. 

Making friends, 88. 
Manliness 28. 
Martyrdom, 134. 
Means of grace, 158. 
Meeting beyond, 82, 88. 
Memory, 77, 111. 
Ministry, 12. 
Missions, 19. 
Modern tactics, 46. 
Money, 151. 
Motherhood, 14. 

Negative and positive religion, 47, 

104,119. 
Negative Heaven, 80. 

One talent, 115. 
Our Father, 58. 
Our mother, 73. 

Pari-h critics, 114. 
Pedestals, 41. 
Permanence of sin, 142. 
Pompeii, 93. 
Possibilities, 115. 
Pot of passion. 33. 
Practical repentance, 35. 
Praise. 41. 
Prayer. 22, 156, 158. 
Preaching and hearing, 129. 
Preaching at home, 132. 
Public opinion, 25. 

Rank and file, 150. 

Raw material of the clergy, 146. 

Reckless jov, 106. 

Religion not for women only, 28, 57. 

Hepentance, 35. 

Reproof resented, 12. 

Resurrection, 75, 81, 82, 83, 85. 

Reverence, 68. 



Scientific fasting, 31. 

Secret sins, 33. 

Seed time, 67, 104. 

Sentiment, 68. 

Selfishness, 109. 

Self the centre, 118. 

Silent conflict, 46. 

Sin, permanence of, 142. 

Sin's dramatic effect upon angels, 71. 

Slander, 113. 

Sonship of Christ, 81. 

Stony ground, 131. 

Strength in weakness, 112. 

Struggling out, 141. 

Success and failure, 48, 147. 

Sunday and Sabbath, 86. 

Superior splendor of the invisible; 

149. 152. 
Sympathy, 16. 

Temptation, 41, 96. 

Thanksgiving, 159. 

Theories, 117. 

Thy kingdom come, 60. 

Thv will be done, 61. 

Time, 17. 

Triumph over money, 151. 

Undue prominence of evil, 70. 
Unequal chances. 9. 
Unknown dead, 155. 
Unprofitable servant, 119. 
Unseen realities, 69, 152. 

Value of appetite, 42. 
Vanitas vauitatum, 93. 



Wastage, 129. 

Wasted lives, 48. 

Watch, 50. 

Weak faith, 133. 

Wealth, 151. 

Whiskey, 107. 

Women protecting men, 57. 

Workmen and the work, 139 c 

World and the soul, 141. 

Wreckage, 135. 



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